M&M vs the cheese grater

December 18th, 2010
As if we weren't already having enough fun on the Saturday before Christmas (yes, the same day the mouse was spotted), M&M decided to add a trip to urgent care to our list of things to do. After helping to organize the mess in the family room now, I headed up to the kitchen to get some dinner made. I asked M&M if she could come help me and I set her to the task of grating some cheese. So she was standing at the counter grating the cheese when her hand slipped and she immediately yelled out and grabbed at her hand. She had been pressing so hard on the grater that when her hand slipped, her finger got sliced by the grater - two deep cuts right on the knuckle of her right hand index finger. I took her upstairs to the bathroom and had her hold a wet washcloth on it while DH and I decided what to do with her. I think that if the cut had been anywhere else on her hand then we would have just bandaged her up at home, but since it was on the knuckle of the index finger of her dominate hand and the cuts looked pretty deep we decided to have DH take her in to the urgent care clinic.

M&M ended up getting 4 stitches in her finger and then they wrapped it up in a splint to prevent her from bending the finger and reopening the wound. They called it a double flap laceration and said that there was a chance that the skin between the two cuts would die and fall off - luckily that didn't happen. She had to keep the stitches in for a week. This was M&M's first experience with stitches and DH said she did really well while they were giving them to her. The cuts were apparently bleeding so much while they were trying to put the stitches in that they had to put a temporary tourniquet on her finger to stop the bleeding so they could see what they were doing. After she got home they wanted her to re-bandage the finger after waiting an hour so I took the opportunity to snap a few pictures. She was standing up in the bathroom while I was taking the pictures and she started to feel light-headed so I made her sit down right away. I've seen more people faint lately than I have in a long time!In some ways it turned out to be perfect timing for this injury because her band concert had already taken place the week before and she only had three days of school left before Christmas break. It's amazing how much we take for granted using a finger though. M&M couldn't play the flute or piano (at least not very easily) and she had a hard time doing simple things like writing and fixing her hair! Even more fun was the story that she got to tell to everyone that saw her - "I cut my finger on a cheese grater"!! Several people made the comment to her, "Wow! That must have been one sharp cheese grater!"M&M's finger has healed up nicely. This picture was taken on Saturday, January 8th, 2011 - 3 weeks after the accident.

And we bought a new grater for Christmas - one that is M&M-proof: