Thumb

I had occasion to drive past Eagle Ridge Hospital the other day, on my way back from Newport Village, and it brought forward a memory I have been trying to eradicate from my brain for over a year and a half.  In the end, everything had passed, and there had been no lasting trauma, but some of the events continued to niggle uncontrolled in my brain.  I thought, perhaps, putting them down on paper would purge them from those neurons that so wanted to get them gone.

It happened late Spring of last year, at the height of the Coquitlam road construction and maintenance season.    The season we all love with the loping backhoes wallowing at 18kph in morning traffic, the smell of fresh asphalt wafting in the air rich with the sounds of scraping shovels and beepers of trucks moving in reverse.   The fashions hadn’t changed much from the year before.  Plain weave nylon was still in vogue, in fluorescent yellow and pink tones, with matching hardhats, utility belts and steel-toed boots. Everyone seeming well coordinated.  Did they have fashion shows for people who design construction clothing?  Magazines?  Pallettes of the Spring fashions? Fashion designers need to start somewhere after all.

I smiled as I passed the construction area in front of my home and waved to the young gal directing the traffic.  She waved back using her sign.  The cars behind me were confused by the alternating ‘Stop’ and ‘Slow’ even though stop and slow was the usual traffic pattern for this time of the day.  I figured it out and pulled into my driveway without incident.  

The fact that road construction was going on in front of my home, with all the requisite crews and equipment, played a little part in what followed.  Other than,  that is, the 5 seconds, when the power went out because of the roadwork.  I am a recreational woodworker.  I make things out of hardwood that I either purchase at exorbitant prices, or have been able to greedily scavenge and air dry myself.  Just before the power went off, I was in my shop trying to split a large maple log that had been drying under my deck for over a year.  This was to then be mounted onto my lathe and fashioned into a bowl.  The plan was to split the log into workable chunks in the good ole’ fashioned way, with a big chisel and a heavy hammer.  I gripped the chisel firmly in my left hand and raised the hammer with my right.  The hammer descended.  There was no turning back. Then the lights went out.  The hammer was flying downwards towards the chisel.  Then the hammer deflected off the side of the chisel and hit me square on the left thumb.  This wasn’t just hitting my thumb with a hammer, like missing a nail.  I was bearing down with all my force in order to split this hard, heavy piece of Maple - 22 ounces of steel travelling at about 200 feet per second. The lights came back on.  I didn’t need them. I could see so many stars that I would have needed a pair of dark shades to see anything.   So now what?  I seemed to recall reading an article on orthopedic surgery, somewhere, that suggested putting the injured digit on ice, having a beer or two and watching a few episodes of the Sopranos, as the appropriate treatment for a condition such as this.  I followed the protocol.

Plan B was invoked 18 hours later.  It involved going to see a medical professional at Eagle Ridge Hospital.

My father and mother live downstairs.  As I was about to depart, my 90-year old father came out of the house hearing that I was outside.   He said the usual hello and asked me what was up. I showed him my thumb which looked like a Chorizo sausage, the nail a lovely blue-black indigo color. 

“During the war,” he said - he starts most sentences that way, it’s something about having been in the Italian military during the second world war- “They would heat a needle in a flame and poke it through the nail to let the blood out.”

I immediately felt like I had eaten 50 raw Chorizo sausages.  I am very sensitive to images of injuries to fingers and other sensitive places and felt a little woozy.  I had slight waves of nausea and my thumb began to throb. He offered to do the medical job for me if I could help him find his glasses, a needle and a match. I said that the hospital would probably be a better choice.  He agreed but insisted on coming with me in case we encountered a Jagdtiger tank convoy.  We would be fine.  He would do the talking – after all he spoke German.

The drive to the hospital had been just fine. No tanks, snipers or even light artillery.  It was Saturday and even the road crews had withdrawn behind their lines. I pulled into a slot in the parking lot.  I asked Dad to stay in the car while I paid for parking and went in to get a sense of how long this would take.  He promised he would not leave the car. 

When I came back, two minutes later, he was not where he was supposed to be. Somehow, I was not surprised but was praying for just a little bit of luck that way.   I looked around frantically and saw his Domino’s Pizza baseball cap sticking out from behind a hedge.  He was talking to the gardener, explaining how, in 1944, an off-course British Vickers Wellington had dropped a 227kg bomb on his house after it had overflown the train station.  The last time I had heard that story was when we were pulling into the parking stall and the last time before that was twenty minutes earlier.  The gardener, a New Canadian, was suitably confused about this line of conversation and looked around suspiciously.  What else had he been told by my father?  I grabbed my dad by the elbow and led him back to the car, searching my pockets for an arc welder to secure him in the car.

I got to see the doctor fairly quickly.  It was a quiet morning in the ER.  As I walked in he nodded, showing  microexpressions of boredom, and rolling his eyes at the ceiling.  Another middle aged weekend tool guy!  He told me that he had to drain the blood from under my nail and send me for an x-ray.

“In the old days”, he said, “We would heat a needle with a match and burn a hole in the nail.”

“But of course it’s much more high tech today,” I replied, with some dry-throated anxiety.

“Yes, we heat the needle with a double A battery.”

“But of course now you have some high tech laser pain blocker thingie, so I won’t feel a thing?”

They didn’t and I did, and the smell of burning keratin was the perfect backdrop.

I only waited about fifteen minutes to get the results of the x-ray – about the same amount of time it took my eyes to stop watering from the burning needle – and this time, the doctor from before was looking suitably impressed.

“You really whacked it”, he said with a hint of awe, “It’s shattered, you’re going to have to go see a specialist and maybe have surgery….”  Somehow his enthusiasm was wasted on me.  To him, it was like I had won runner up in some bizarre, self-inflicted injury contest, having come second only to some drunk carpenter who took off his knee cap with a belt sander.  I guess emergencies vary in entertainment value.

My thumb was splinted and wrapped with tape and I was given an appointment to see a specialist at Royal Columbian the following week.

When I came out into the waiting room, my dad was at the counter making airplane-like gesturing moves to the, very patient, triage nurses.  Behind him, in line, waiting patiently, in blood stained carpenter coveralls, was a man pressing a portion of the Tri-City News to one of his knees.