9-finger typing

It was a lovely day, not too hot, not too cold. The perfect day for harvesting the oranges and lemons that have been burdening our citrus trees for weeks now. We're skirting the edge of "ripe", approaching "falling off the tree" and "rotting" -- it is time for the fruit to come off!

I picked about 98 percent of the oranges without incident before lunch; we have a box that formerly held copy paper that's overflowing now.

After lunch, DS2 traipsed out with me to help harvest the lemons. The thorns on the lemon tree are larger and more plentiful than the ones on the orange tree, which can mostly be ignored. You don't want to ignore lemon thorns -- I've several nasty scratches to testify to that. So instead of relying on brute force to pull the lemons off their stems, I took my kichen shears out with me so I could snip them off.
The harvest
DS2 and I had a good rhythm going; I'd snip off 3 or 4 lemons, hand them to him, and he'd put them in the box. The big box (much bigger than the copy paper box) was nearly full when I reached up to cut a lemon overhead and... snipped off the tip of my finger.

A triangular chunk of flesh, about a quarter inch along the longest side, was clinging to the blade of the scissor. Yikes I thought (really!), but it didn't hurt all that much, so I looked at my finger to see how bad it was... and I immediately knew it was pretty bad, so I put pressure on it right away (thumb to fingertip -- I looked like I was holding on to something tiny) and walked into the house to ask for my mother's opinion. She concurred: a doctor should look at it.

I called DH to come and take me (Mom doesn't drive), and an hour later, we were home from the urgent care center. My finger has a ridiculous bandage on it, but at least it's not throbbing anymore. The doctor wrote me a prescription for Lortab, and even though it makes me feel spacey, it really did work for the pain.

Typing with nine fingers is very strange, but still a lot easier than the one-handed typing I did when I used to type and nurse an infant at the same time. The only words that are really difficult now are the ones with lots of "R"s.
Handle with care

The big bandage comes off in two days, and then I'll just need to keep the wound clean, smeared with anti-bacterial ointment, and covered until it heals. The urgent care doc didn't give me any stitches -- there was nothing to suture. He stopped the bleeding with silver nitrate (which hurt like all get-out), bandaged me up, and sent me on my way. Only after we got home again did we realize that I had forgotten to get a tetanus booster -- fortunately the care center took care of that in less than five minutes when DH swung me by later.

So now I'm incapacited in a new and different way, due to my own carelessness. There aren't many positives to squeeze out of this situation, but at least the Lortab was a cheap prescription, and I'll only have to wear this stupid bandage for a couple of days.