Writers Corner for July 27, 2012

TRUE LOVE

I saw them walking hand in hand,

A small little woman and a great big man. It took two of her steps to match his one,

But he timed all of his so she needn't run.

They were both well along in their later years,

And she looked up at him as to allay her fears -Of what her life would be if he were not there,

And he looking down, saw his whole world there.

It was easy to see, they were so much in love

That theirs was a match made in Heaven above!

And sincerely they prayed that the pathway they'd trod,

Would be one that they'd know was approved by God.

Now their love was one of extremely great power. They felt it grew stronger hour by hour.

And the strongest plea said in their daily prayer

Was each to their Maker, "May I always be there."

- Darrell I. Burrell, Coeur d'Alene

•••

RULE OF THUMB

By Kathy Graham, Harrison

I am currently slowed down a bit by a dumb thumb injury. I was putting a glass away in the morning a few days ago, when a cup from the shelf above decided to jump down on top of the glass I was holding and break a 'V' shaped wedge out of the glass. In trying to catch the cup with the glass I was holding, I sliced a nice flap in the pad of my right hand thumb about an inch long and half-inch wide.

Of course seeing the blood put me into shock and all I could do was take a wad of paper towels and apply pressure to stop the bleeding. And wipe up the blood on the counter, throw away the glass and now chipped cup. All around, it was pretty messy. After I stopped hyperventilating, I ran my thumb under water and reapplied the paper towels. After 10 minutes of pressure, I had it under control, but not bandaged. So, I walked up stairs to tell my husband what happened and ask for his help bandaging the "woo-woo wound."

Well, that didn't work out so well, because once I showed him the cut and it started to bleed again the moment I took away the paper towel so he could see, he went white as a sheet and moved quickly toward his sink saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I can't help you." Stunned and even more in shock that my husband of 25 years wasn't going to help, I reapplied the paper towels to stop the bleeding again and watched in amazement as my husband picked up his small bathroom air fan and put it close to his face for fresh air and said he couldn't help because just by looking at the cut he was going to pass out. Well, imagine how it must feel to actually have the pain of the cut in your own thumb and have to look at it too. (Okay, this is much funnier now than it was at the time, and I am actually laughing telling you the story.)

After a few minutes, my husband (now breathing normally) brought over his box of Band-Aids, put them on the counter and said he would go wake our college-age daughter and ask her to help me. This went over well, since it was about 6:30 a.m., an hour that she does not frequently open her eyes. In the meantime, I was able to open the Band-Aids with my teeth and used four to wrap pressure around the cut to keep it closed. Then I wrapped it in gauze, put several layers of gauze under the thumb to protect it from the world and got a roll of sticky ace bandage to wrap around the outside both above and below the wound to protect it. I also took some Tylenol for good measure. By the time I finished, I looked like the nursery rhyme kid who stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and I hadn't yet taken a shower or gotten dressed, a necessity before heading to the office. A little ingenuity led me to wrap the "plum" of a thumb in saran wrap for the shower, and it worked no problem.

I never realized how much I use my right thumb for everything I do. To apply pressure to scrub my face, dry myself off, brush my teeth, put in my contacts, pull up socks put on shoes, all of which require use of the right thumb pad. The hardest task was fastening my bra and pulling up my pantyhose with no right thumb. I created a big hole in the first pair of nylons with my pinky finger because it is not used to being used to pull on clothes. Text messaging is out; holding a pen and writing with no thumb is ridiculous since that's all thumbs; and I am re-learning to tap the space bar on the computer with my left thumb. And business handshakes with my wrapped thumb sticking out of the handshake are becoming less odd to me. I have had one or two instances where something touched or pressed accidentally against the cut, and ZOWIE the pain was instant and killer!!! So, must avoid any touch in the future.

So for the past three days, I haven't looked at the cut or removed the bandage. Didn't want to see how bad it was. Today, after I took a shower (with a plastic glove rubber banded to my wrist) I decided to be brave and look at the cut and change the bandage. There was no bleeding, although there was lots of dried, stinky blood in the bandage. No infection that I could see and the skin isn't gangrene. So I re-bandaged it, put on an antibiotic and afterwards, I looked on the Internet for info on getting stitches for cuts and was surprised to learn that even a cut my size doesn't always require stitches if you can hold the skin together. So, right now I am hoping for the best and not wanting to be told a week from now, that I need to get stitches in my thumb.

•••

Word-slingers wanted.

Send us your poems, your prose, essays and anecdotes. We'll publish them here.

The Press Writers Corner features original, creative writing submitted by our readers. We publish the column most Fridays in the North Idaho Life section of the print edition of The Press.

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