It’s Always Something, Isn’t It

I did some shopping last week. I like to use the self-check aisles, mainly because I like to use my own recyclable bags, and I know that it slows down the checkers, because they have a rhythm for bagging items. I try to help by doing the bagging myself, and no one complains. Or scowls. But, I feel like I’m getting in their way. So, I usually go through a self-check lane.

Last Thursday, I spent about 20 minutes or so at a store, and then went to the self-check line. I pulled items from my cart, scanned them, and bagged them. Then, I retrieved my credit card from my pocket. As I was moving it to the card reader, I noticed that it had something red on the back.

“What’s that?” I wondered. It looked like red syrup, maybe. It didn’t feel very sticky, and, really, how would red syrup get on my card in my pocket. I hadn’t picked up anything that would have gotten on my card. In my pocket. I wiped it off, on the skirt of my dress, and then tried to use the card, but the card reader wouldn’t take the card.

I finally motioned to the store employee who was tending the self-check area.

“I can’t get my card to go through,” I said. “And there’s something sort of sticky on the card.” I kept trying to wipe off the red stuff. Then, I finally realized that it was blood. Yes, blood. Blood on my palm and on my thumb. I kept wiping it with my skirt.

She tried several times (while I was wiping my hands on my dress). She tried swiping it, when the slot wasn’t working. With perseverance, she finally got a swipe to work. I thanked her and put my bags in the cart and wheeled it out to the car. I kept wiping my bleeding hand as I drove home. There, I got a bandage box and put a small bandage on my thumb. Red blood ran right out. I needed two, larger, bandages on my thumb and one on my palm. I was just mystified.

I hadn’t picked up anything in the store that was sharp. I couldn’t imagine what had happened.

Friday, I removed the bandages, washed and dried my hand, and put new bandages on, as the one on my thumb was still bleeding a little.

When I woke up Saturday morning, the thumb was throbbing, and it was swollen. I told David that, maybe, I should go to the Express Care clinic.

He said, yeah, there was one really close to us. And I said, no, I needed to go to the one that’s affiliated with the system that includes my physician.

“Otherwise,” I said, “I’ll have to spend time telling them what all my medications are and what my medical issues are. The clinic that’s part of the system will have all that information.”

I went off to run a couple of errands, and then made my way over to the Express Care place. They have the most efficient system going. I pulled up and parked next to a couple of other cars. There are three slots that have signs in front of them that say, “If you need to be seen, please call us at . . . ” and there was a phone number. I called the number and someone answered. I said that I had a cut on my thumb and it was swollen and I thought it needed to be seen. She said where was I parked. Was I in one of the numbered slots? And I said that I was parked next to slot number one. She asked if I was in their system, and I said, yes, and gave her my name and birth date and my physician’s name.

She apparently checked to verify that and asked for my phone number and said that she was going to text me a form with information that I needed to confirm. When I’d done that, I should text it back to her and then someone would come out to get me. That took a few minutes, and then, sure enough, a guy came out and asked me to lower the window. He ran a thermometer in the direction of my forehead, and said, yes, I could come in.

The waiting room was completely empty. There was a partitioned space where I was weighed and had my blood pressure taken. Then, we went towards the back and went into an examination room. On an iPad, he pulled up all my medical information, and confirmed what medications I took, and looked at my thumb and asked how it happened. And, I had to say, “I’m not quite sure.” Shopping, bleeding, cart–maybe?

Then, he said the nurse would be in, shortly.

I meant to bring a book, but I forgot. I did have my phone, and I pulled up something to read. When the nurse came in, she looked at my phone and asked what I was reading. “Hebrews,” I said. She said that she’d been reading Job and found it frustrating. I admitted that I hadn’t read Job for quite a while.

She looked at my thumb and asked what happened. And I had to give that same “I’m not quite sure” answer. She said she’d write a prescription for an antibiotic, and I probably needed a tetanus shot. When did I last have one? I had no idea. It seemed that, at some time in the very distant past, I’d needed one, but I could not recall when, or even why. She looked at the iPad and said, “I know your doctor. She’s very thorough. If you’d had one in the past ten years, she’d have documented it.” So, I got a tetanus shot. She called my pharmacy and gave them the prescription information. As I left, she said to keep it clean but don’t cover it.

I did a little more shopping, to give the pharmacy time to fill the prescription. I stopped by Barnes & Noble book store. In the children’s section, I found a series of informational books that looked really interesting. There were titles such as Who Was Pete Seeger? Who was Benedict Arnold? Who Was A. A. Milne? and What Was the Titanic? What Was the Berlin Wall? What Was D-Day? Then I picked up What Was the Holocaust? Wow, I thought. That’s pretty heavy reading for school-agers. I flipped through the book, and, then, THE CUT ON MY THUMB OPENED UP AGAIN AND I BLED ALL OVER THE PLACE!

I was going to have to purchase the book.

I went to the bathroom to wash my bloody hands. I took a piece of paper towel with me from the bathroom, and held it against my thumb to keep from bloodying up anything else. Then I went to the Big Lots store next door and bought a box of bandages to keep any more bloody incidents from happening.

As of today, the thumb isn’t swollen any more, and I can hardly see the scrape. It’s still a little tender. I still have lots of pills to take. I think there were ten days’ worth, at three times a day.

  This is the left-hand side of a cart at the store where I cut my thumb. This isn’t really sharp, but, I guess if I ran my thumb (on the right-hand side of the cart’s handle) across that edge, in just the right way, it might have caused that scrape. And, as a diabetic, I don’t necessarily feel my extremities all that well. So, it’s possible, I suppose, that the injury happened without my realizing it. Otherwise, I’m still mystified.

However, I do have a grateful heart, for how my body works to heal, for the trained health workers who know how to help me through that healing process, and for the medications that have been created to relieve the symptoms. Very grateful.