Title: TAKING TIME TO HEAL
Print Status: Available
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Comic ID #2272
Title: TAKING TIME TO HEAL
Print Status: Available
Title: TAKING TIME TO HEAL
Print Status: Available
Discussion (56) ¬
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Glad to hear you’re ok Tom! Keeping your hand above your heart should ease the throbbing. Hey you could always write it into the comic like they had to do with Shia’s hand in Transformers 2 🙂
Ouch! Sorry to hear about that. Hope everything heals up properly.
It’s weird, a friend of mine was hit by a truck and hurt his hand just a few days ago.
Ouch! Good luck with the healing. We at Halforum are keeping you in our thoughts and hope you are able to get back to normal soon.
Sorry about your hand, man.
I’m glad there’s no permanent damage; Hope you’ll be up and running again soon enough.
Also, thanks for being a good sport about this & realizing the funny of this incident, makes me feel less guilty about chuckling over ‘How-to-books misfortune’.
Again, best wishes from me.
Oh wow, sorry to hear about the accident, Tom. Glad to hear that you’re okay, though. If I were in a joking mood, I would point out the similarities between your life and Shai LaBeouf (hand damage), but it may be too soon for that. 😛
Wizard World in a few weeks, I’ll buy you a drink sir, and we can celebrate the good things in our lives together.
Oh, man – that’s awful! Hope you feel better soon.
I’m just like you, man. I’m almost to the point where I have to bring truck straps to the doctor so they can draw blood. Last time, they had to take it out the back of my hand rather than the inside of my elbow. One reason I never want to work with power tools…
Holy hell, Tom! I had no idea.
So sorry you were hurt but really glad that it turned out to be superficial.
My sister cut her arm once and I’ll never forget how it looked like a hot dog that’s burst in the microwave.
Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, be it a guest comic or just free Canadian health care.
All the best,
Graham
I expect pictures of the stitches sir.
Wow, this all seemed so familiar to me, other than the fact that it was your hand. I used to work in a deli and nearly sliced off my finger once. Seven stitches. I guess I’m more like Cami in that I examined the whole thing being done. I actually did nick a tendon, though, so I can’t bend my finger as far as I can the others.
Perhaps this is karma for making fun of Shia? Just speculating here.
In other news, I wish you a speedy recovery! Getting your stitches out shouldn’t be too bad. Mind over matter and all that. 🙂
Good luck Tom. It is going to suck for awhile and I say this from personal experience… I had “accident” with a table saw that was my own fault. Even though I was using a push block, the piece of wood I was running through the saw was shorter than the width of the blade… it was late and I was trying to finish a project… not thinking! MAJOR kickback, but I got my hand up quick enough to keep from being hit in the neck and face – and lost the end of my pinkie finger. HA! Same kinda mess in the garage and kitchen, however I was hard-headed enough to drive myself to the hospital. Not a good idea. You definitely did right calling 911. Now the best thing you can do is use that router as soon as you are healed enough to pick it up, I had an irrational fear of the saw for weeks while attempting to finish the job I was on.
Best wishes!
Yikes!
I had an inkling of what was going on from Twitter, but you certainly paint a picture here. Glad they could patch it up. And I’m just like you when it comes to blood/needles/hospitals/anything. The simulated wound you showed was enough for me…
Good heavens man!
Hopefully that gave you a healthy respect for power tools. 😉 This is a conversation I’ve had repeatedly with my boys regarding my tools. They’re very unforgiving. You cease paying attention, or get careless, and you’re going to get hurt – and probably pretty badly. You don’t take shortcuts, you don’t take chances, and you don’t work distracted.
Do yourself a favor and pick this up Norm’s Router 101:
http://www.newyankee.com/getproduct.php?0606
– or here –
http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=17456&cookietest=1
Or (cough cough) you can find the arrrchived copy. But given your very vivid experience of what a good education can spare you, hopefully it’s worth the cost of entry. 🙂
Sorry to read about your accident but glad everything is okay as it can be. And what is it with ERs and sterilizing/cleaning wounds? I totally related to your sterilization pain. I had a bicycle accident a few years back with road rash and the ER was not kind in sterilizing and cleaning the wounds at all. *Shiver*
I sometimes wonder if ER staff make it as painful as possible so you’ll be more careful next time.
Wow, good thing your hand wasn’t permanently damaged. I know how horrible a trip to ER can be, a few years ago I broke my thumb and I had 6 surgical nails to hold the bones while they mended, it wasn’t pretty when they put them in, but it was hell when they took them out.
Take care dude, I love your comic and podcast, and don’t worry, I’m sure that things will get better soon.
Best wishes 😀
Ooh, very close shave there. Very glad to hear the hand (and the rest of you) will be alright. And hey, now you’ve got a scar with a story. Good for impressing others (though you may want to switch the story up a bit) 😉
Owwwwch that must have been the worst day in recent memory, if not of all time for you.
At least the worst part is over, and it sounds like you handled it GREAT (could have freaked out much more).
Glad to hear you saved your hand. Get well soon. I burnt my hand pretty bad the other night, no ER though, thankfully. Stuff like that happens to me all the time.
That’s pretty heavy. Good to know that you’re okay.
Now get back to work.
Just kidding.
I had a similar, if less severe, experience with a chainsaw when I was a kid. We had a big row of trees that needed to be cut down, and my Dad was felling them with the big gas chainsaw while I followed along behind with a little six inch electric one cutting the limbs off. One of the branches was really bouncy, so I reached out to hold it steady with my left hand — whereupon the saw naturally bounced right down the branch and across the back of my hand ( twice ). Like you, I immediately went in to run cold water over it, but since the other saw was too noisy for him to hear, I told my friend Bryan to go let my Dad know that I had cut myself.
Somehow, between my talking to Bryan and him talking to my Dad, “I cut my hand” morphed into “James cut his hand _off_”, so you can imagine how freaked out my Dad was when he came running into the house — to find me standing there fairly calmly with one hand under the water and the other going through the medicine cabinet looking for antiseptic. Luckily, I didn’t need stitches, but thirty-odd years later I still have two scars, though you have to look pretty closely to see the second one.
Glad to hear you’re all right, Tom. That’s scary stuff.
Love your stuff here at Theater Hopper and hope your 2009 starts to turn around very soon!
Keep it clean, etc. All the stuff you heard before, and get better soon. And try not to look at it, those kinds of things gross me out too. 🙂
Oman! That’s intense! Glad to hear you’re alright, and that it wasn’t much, much worse.
Oh and you described the uncomfortableness of the numbing and the sewing perfectly: I got 7 stitches in my chin from a bike accident in October of last year and it felt exactly like you described. Argh!
All the best. Take all the time you need. (You could pull a QC and have a Guest Comic Week. I think we’d understand.)
-n
Man, that sucks. I had a dog bite me in the face once, like within the past year. Cut my top lip right in half and a couple punctures in the cheek. 23 stitches and lots of needles right in the face.
Hey Tom,
As an EMT and hopefully ER doctor when I finish med school, it’s interesting to hear a patient perspective. I’d bet they were joking about the first time doing a stitch thing, but it’s possible since it is July and that is when fresh med school graduates start. Still, he would have at least done some stitching during his surgery rotation in med school. And often, residents at teaching hospitals are better at some tasks than the attendings. This includes stitching since the attendings almost always let the residents do it and thus haven’t practiced for a while. Not to say they would do a bad job…but the resident is probably more efficient and smoother at it.
Also, most people are surprised by how a little bit of blood can look like a lot. It splatters and spreads out and sticks to everything. So it ends up looking like a lot. That’s probably why “a lot of gauze” was used. It probably wasn’t actually that much blood.
Anyway, hope that heals up soon. Keep it clean.
Glad to hear that there won’t be any permanent damage. Take it easy and heal up.
glad to hear you are doing well now. it’s true people often stack many things on in their life, i put a lot of time in at work and am currently in the process of planning and starting projects around the house and my car. it’s weird but when power tools are involved it doesn’t seem like work when it’s something that doesn’t have to be completed. with everything going on i’ve decided to try my hand at growing a bonsai tree i figure it will become a relaxing and stress relieving activity. take heart i’m afraid of needles and i’ve been diabetic for 13 years. i still cringe when i have to give blood but yet i take 4 shots a day myself, but when faced with life or death i’m not going to let my fear stop me from enjoying the life i have. i’m also afraid of heights too and i’m going skydiving for my 30th birthday. Boondock saints is a great movie, it’s kind of ironic you watched that movie after your accident especially when a finger gets blown off in that movie. take care and remember to enjoy what you have and not worry about what you want instead 🙂
Sorry to hear about your hand, Tom. Hope you get better soon!
gahhhh… i got to the part about the router slipping and I had to stop…. I’d yell at you about what the heck were you thinking and whatnot but I’m sure Cami and all the other female relitives in your life have done enough of that….. If i’m correct the male relitives should be admonishing you with a “well don’t you feel stupid”
anyway heal up and feel better… and when the youngin asks…. you got the scar fighting a bear 😀
Glad you’re OK overall 🙂 Hope you get back to your full range of movement/etc. :).
For cleaning up the garage – my grandpa has some mix of various chemicals, the prominent ones were: windex, some sort of dish soap, and a degreaser. Bleach should probably help too – assuming you can keep children and animals out of there for a little while. You’ll probably want to have the stall door open (at the very least while you’re washing) so fumes don’t become a problem though.
Glad everything was not as serious as first thought! Get well soon!
Since there was a lot of conversation swirling around this post, I didn’t want to chime in and prematurely end anything. But I wanted to say thanks to everyone for their support and well wishes.
I think it’s kind of funny the people who made the comparison of my hand injury to Shia LaBeouf. Karma’s a bitch, right? ;D
It’s all good.
I don’t think I’ll be getting “back on the horse” any time soon when it comes to using a router or any other power tool. Granted, it’s only been a couple of days, but I’m too freaked out by it. I haven’t even straightened up the area where I accident happened – something I realize I need to do to put it behind me.
At some point I’ll probably post pictures of my hand. Probably when the wound is a little less… disturbing. Maybe next week when I get the stitches out.
Ugh. Those stitches. I redressed the wound earlier this evening and I can’t even look at them. It’s totally unnatural to me.
A guest week might be in the cards. I don’t know, though. I’m definitely going to need coverage when I go to Wizard World Chicago in two weeks, so I don’t want to burn people out on guest strips between now and then. We’ll see. If you want to do a guest strip and send it in, I’ll always find a way to use it.
Anyway, thanks again for your patience and understanding. You guys have always been amazingly supportive and I’m very thankful for that. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Wow Tom. That’s a hell of a thing! I’m glad there was no permanent damage and that everything turned out ok. I for one am a huge fan and will wait as long as it takes for you to heal. Best to you and your family.
Hope the hand heals quickly Tom.
I would like to say that this sounds like something that could very easily happen to me. And while getting sticked up I would also have to turn away and my wife would be engrossed with the grossness of it like Cami was.
I hope you get better Tom, I’ve been reading TH for a few years now. I’m a hands on healer and i’ll do a bit of a remote healing and hope it helps (think, prayer without the god part). Hope you get better!
Hope your hand heals up well Tom. But I have to ask if it was a coincidence that movies you watched include scenes where characters lose fingers?
It makes a good story so there is a silver lining right there. You could also make up something that sounds bad ass. Being more serious my dad always said that the most important safety precaution is a second person because you’d be amazed how often we ignore first hand dangers that are blindingly obvious to another person.
Everyone tells me I’ll have a good story. I’m just going to tell people I got the scar fighting a bear.
I told my sister-in-law that I was done with power tools forever. She said I should still be able to use them, but only if someone else is in the house.
I dunno. Unless you have cat-like reflexes and a hand made of industrial grade steel, the fact that you’re in the house probably isn’t going to prevent me from carving up my hand a second time.
It happens so fast, you know?
Ideally they say “What the f*** are you thinking?!” before you push the button.
Glad to hear it wasn’t too bad. Get well soon.
As for the blood, clean up what you can get easily. Leave the rest as a reminder to do the job in the future.
I got into an accident where I almost lost my right index finger, and I had to get 5 stitches. I was lucky, just like you were, because there was no permanent damage (although it still hurts on particularly humid days)
When I went to take off the stitches, as the Doctor took out the first one, he saw that it hurt me. A lot. He asked me if I was ok, and I told him “No, it hurts”. He replied with “Well, all you can do is shout and be angry at me, ’cause it is going to hurt more”. Funny in retrospect, but not really at that moment.
Hope it goes better for you!
Dude, Matt… that’s not what I want to hear about the stitches. I’m really worried about having them taken out and hurting. Just… not looking forward to it at all. I’d rather take the stitches out myself and have someone supervise.
What a jerk doctor, though! It hurts, too bad?! Where’s his bedside manner?
Glad to hear you’re okay Tom. That’s one hell of a saga.
Looks like you and I are hospital buddies. I am reading through your archives to pass time while I recover from the hip surgery I had on the same day you went to the E.R. Here’s to complete healing, eh?
Damn Tom that sucks hard. Hope the hand heals well. I wouldn’t know what it’s like to have my thumb nearly cut off by a power tool but I can imagine what it would feel like.
Yeah I’ve heard that stitches hurt like a bitch when they come out but you should be alright. If it gets really painful just ask the doctor to give you a local anasthetic(sic) to help with the pain. Don’t know, could help.
Can’t wait for your comics to come back Tom!
Hey Tom, glad to hear you’re doing alright. Getting the stitches out shouldn’t be that bad. It doesn’t hurt like a sharp pain as much as a burning sensation.
Glad you’re OK Tom. Get well soon yeah? Your stuff is my daily ritual. Love it.
Btw, erm..did you take a pic of the “crime scene”?
I haven’t taken a picture of the crime scene yet, but the thought crossed my mind.
I’m starting to become comfortable enough with the stitches that I might take a picture of my unbandaged hand soon.
Wishing you a speedy recovery.
As for how the hand might look, I suffered a nasty face laceration a year ago, which I applied Mederma to for a few weeks. That took care of the scar, making it 99.97% invisible by the time I was finished.
Jim, how long did you use Mederma? I’ve heard you have to use it fairly consistently for a very long period of time for it to be effective.
I’ve also heard buying Vitamin E in gel caps and applying the liquid in the pill directly to the scar helps as well.
If it makes you feel better Tom, my dad the handyman has cut his hand twice with a circular saw. It even happens to the pros.
The scar will go down eventually on its own – i didn’t have any luck with Mederma with any of my scars. I hope you feel better!
Haha, sorry Tom!
The doctor was actually very nice, he helped me through all the healing process. But he was basically telling me that there was nothing he could do about the pain when removing the stitches, so I might as well take out my frustrations by screaming and cursing at him.
Two things to keep in mind, though: First, the scar/stitches where in th palm-side of my fingers, which I figure have a lot more nerve endings than the top of the hand, so it might have hurt a lot because of that. And secondly, I was only like 11 at the time, so my pain threshold wasn’t exactly high.
Anyway, I hope it doesn’t hurt a lot.
Funny how a couple more little details in Matt’s stitches story can ease your worries a little, eh Tom? I mean, you gotta be thinking “oh, he was 11? Ok, pretty sure I have a higher pain tolerance than an 11 year old.” haha… maybe pain, but obviously not sight of blood.
And if seeing wounds didn’t disturb you so much, I would tell you to watch the ‘Bastogne’ episode of Band of Brothers. Now THOSE are some wounds to remind you, “hey, I guess mine’s not too bad.” The one that gets me is the guy who says “No Doc, I can handle it, save the morphine,” even though he was in extreme pain from this gaping wound in his leg, because they were so low on supplies and someone more injured could have the morphine. I saw that and wondered, “wow, could I pass up the morphine if my leg looked like that!? Not so sure.”
Anyways, best wishes on that hand healing well Tom. Take it easy and be careful! 🙂
I used Mederma for about 7 weeks twice daily, and it was worth it. Doesn’t sting, and it starts to have an effect pretty quickly.
Not sure about the Vitamin E trick, but hey, it couldn’t hurt.