This story has nudity, excitement, pretty nurses, and more....

Maybe I'd better start off by saying it isn't a good idea to begin a wood-working project around the house while nude, because sometimes, accidents do happen.

I live alone in one of these upholstered-closet type studio units, and I don't have a lot of visitors, so I quite often don't bother getting dressed just for loafing around the apartment's basically one-room layout. Nobody sees me so it isn't a problem. But today I was reminded of why that isn't always a great way to go....

I had marked a board that I wanted to drill a hole through, so that I could then use a little coping saw to enlarge that into a larger cutout. I had the board on the floor between my feet, and was holding it with one hand, while using the electric drill with the other. The bit wasn't biting into the wood very well, even though it isn't that old or worn, so without thinking (my favorite mode!) I let go of the board, and put both hands on the drill. The drill bit hit a knot, and the knot caused the board to lock onto the bit and become a spinning propeller on the end of the drill. All that happened very quickly of course, and as the board spun around, it whacked into the big toe of my right foot, and loosened the nail enough for the blood to fly onto the kitchen floor.  So that's the nudity and excitement part, mostly.

When that happened, I grabbed a nearby roll of paper towels, and wrapped one around my damaged toe, and then squeezed it tightly to keep the nail in place and stop the bleeding. But just try to figure a way to get around the house while naked and holding your big toe with one hand to keep from bleeding all over the carpet. You get a whole new perspective from down there on the floor as you crawl around in a crouching position holding the toe together in one hand. But I somehow managed to get the door unlocked, and then phone a neighbor who was on a day off, and could come and help me patch up the toe so I could then get dressed. He cut some string and folded a couple of paper towels while I wrapped it up better and tied everything tightly in place. Then I got dressed, and he drove me to the Emergency at our nearby hospital.

The admitting nurse looked at me wearing one shoe and one sock, and said that she was just guessing, but was this a foot problem? I asked, "What gave it away?" She said, "Your missing shoe." And then the waiting began. I went there around nine in the morning, and by the time their one and only on-duty doctor got around to me, it was nearly two in the afternoon. The rest of the story was an anticlimax - the doc looked at it, and said "Your paper towel and string did an excellent job of stopping the bleeding, and there's now really nothing for me to do except get a nurse to replace the dressing on it for you, and then you can go." I replied, "No, I can't go just yet, because I have an appointment here in Respiratory for a lung capacity test at 2:45 and it's almost that now, but thanks for checking this toe for me. I was sure that nail would fall right off as soon as we cut the string around it, but it didn't." The doc said, "But it will come off eventually as a new one grows under it. Meanwhile, it's OK as it is as long as it doesn't show signs of infection or starts bleeding again. You did the right thing by applying pressure to it right away, because that is really about all we can do."

They gave me a tetanus shot, and bandaged up the toe, and off I went down the hall to the appointment for the lung test, which turned out OK I think, but we won't get the official results of that for about a week. Everything's computerized these days, of course. My former doctor of years ago had a little hollow tube with a moveable plunger that slid along a scale on the side of it, and you took a big breath and puffed mightily into that, to move the plunger, and he took the reading off the side of it, compared that to a chart on the wall, and you had your answer right now. Thanks to the marvels of science, we now have to puff into a gadget linked to a computer which records a graph which gets sent someplace to be analyzed by some backroom nerd who sends your doctor a report next week.

The moral of this little tale of course being that if you are doing woodwork, it's best not to be totally naked at the time, just in case something goes wrong. I told this story to a nice little old lady in the waiting area at the hospital today, and I said it ought to make good material for my blog, and she said, "Don't leave out the part about being naked - that's the best part!" So this is for her, and I hope she reads it. I'm sure she will tell all her friends.