A horse bit my thumb. No, seriously! It happened around midnight last night. I’d driven to the barn on my usual my late-night hay run for my own horse, Ben, and to give an extra grain meal to an elderly gelding at the end of an aisle in another part of the barn. On my way back out from the grain feeding, I was giving stray hay wisps to various horses as I passed their stalls. One fellow engulfed my carelessly projecting thumb tip along with the hay and chomped down.
YYYEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH
He let go. It bled. Enthusiastically.
Baby wipes, it turns out, are merely okay for stanching bleeding, though they do help to clean the wound. At least they don’t STING OW OW OW like first-aid alcohol wipes. Paper towels will do to absorb blood in a (heh) pinch. I sat in my car, inside overhead light on, and tended to my wounded digit. It was Not A Pretty Sight: A layer of skin skimmed off part of it, the nail already mottling purple, blood welling from the ripped-open bit at the base of the nail.
I still had to take care of Ben, in another building we call the shedrow. I drove the short distance to it and wrestled from the back seat, one and a half handedly, the five and six gallon containers of warm water I’d brought from home. (Hey, it’s very cold and he hates having to break the ice in his water buckets. Pampered? Whyever would you say that?) Yes, as a matter of fact, it WAS rather awkward trying to carry them. And yes, it DID hurt like a sumvabeech.
Ben greeted me with his usual joyous bellow (translation: “Food human!”). His cheerful greed was only slightly shaken by my self-pitying yowlings as I tended to him. I managed to pour out the water without scroaning too much.
Done at last, I got into my car and had a screaming cursing sobbing meltdown. Hey, I needed that – it HURT! And was a bloody mess. I knew I really ought to go to the emergency room rather than just binding it up and hoping for the best. Didn’t want to, since I knew there’d probably be a long wait, this being a Saturday-into-Sunday night. But the thumb was… Ugly. And it HURT.
Sigh. There followed a one-handed drive to the emergency room; a long wait with nothing to read; being at last brought into an exam room for more excruciatingly long waits; release at last, after X rays, Bacitracining, bandaging, and splinting (mostly for protection since the quick read of the X rays showed no break), and prescriptions for three drugs – two antibiotics and some Percocet. Fortunately there’s an all-night CVS pharmacy open on my route home, so I was able to fill them. I got home around quarter of 5:00 a.m.
So here I am at 5:00-something a.m., home again, home again, jiggety-jig, pampering myself with a bowl of ice cream as I write this. I’m just waiting for the Percocet to kick in, then will crawl off to bed. Come the morning – yes, okay, I know it’s morning now, but I’m going to crash as soon as the narcotic takes effect – I will post this cautionary tale, so that all who read it may learn the hard lesson impressed upon me, of caution with digit placement when near equine incisors. Or you can point and laugh, if you prefer.
Oh, well, could have been worse – could have been my right thumb.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… Pain Bad. Narcotics Good. I want my mommy!
