DON’T PANIC, in large friendly letters

“Uh… David?” My tone is coated in calm. “Would you please come help me for a sec?”

“Sure thing!” I picture David bounding up from the living room chair where he has been programming. “What’s up?”

“I, uh… sewed through my finger. With the sewing machine.”

“You what?!?” David sprints into the room.

I’m over the sink letting the blood pool there, instead of on the floor.

30 seconds earlier

The sewing machine is out for the first time in six months. Because why? Because we are having people come stay in our home. This has given me the impetus to finish tasks that would otherwise languish.

Those hand towels for the 1/2 bath that are a couple of inches too long? They need to be hemmed. Those chenille king-sized pillow shams? They need to be turned into queen-sized shams. Shouldn’t take me more than three-quarters of an hour to do both projects and then I can make a big ✓ on my To-Do list. I fucking love checking those boxes.

Towels? No problem. Not perfect, but other than me, who is going to be looking at their hems?

I’m half-way through the first pillow sham – carefully guiding the fabric through so that all the chenille fabulousness doesn’t bunch up – when my index finger feels a little ouchy.

I look down.

Huh.

My finger appears to have a needle stuck in it.

I have sewing machined my finger.

My finger can’t move. Why can’t it move? I tilt my head for a better angle.

Because the presser foot is holding my finger down to the feed dogs. What, you may ask, are feed dogs? They are the little metal teethy things that advance fabric underneath a sewing machine’s presser foot. Why are they called feed dogs? Not a fucking clue. There’s no dog anywhere. Not even in icon form.

You know when your mind goes blank? That. I blink eleven times before my grey matter kicks back in and I think to raise the presser foot. Because, obviously, all I have to do, is raise the presser foot and it’ll immediate lift the needle out of my finger.

It doesn’t.

Instead, when I raise the presser foot, my entire finger is lifted from the feed dogs.

Which means, the needle is IN there…

No blood is spurting, which is definitely good news. Boo-yeah! But if I pull my finger from the needle will that mean that there will be blood? No way to know without trying, am I right?

Sooooooo… The blood spatter from yanking — because I did have to YANK that finger off the needle — is noteworthy.

I grab a tissue to staunch the bleeding and head over to the sink. I squeeze the finger to really get the blood flowing, and then I run my very bleedy finger under cold water. Which is when David comes in.

“Would you mind terribly,” I ask “going upstairs and grabbing some gauze and bandages, please?”

“You sewed through your finger!?!”

I finally take a moment to peruse the extent of the injury. “Naaaaaaah. Almost through. Only bleeding on the nail side. It’s not that bad. But if you could grab the gauze, that’d be great, love.” These are not the bloody eddies that you’re looking for.

I gauze the shit out of the minor impaling and keep my hand above my heart. Later, I off-the-cuff ask my nurse practitioner when I see her at an event, “So, if, say, someone sewed through most of their finger with a sewing machine, what’s the protocol?”

“Someone, huh?”

“Yeah… asking for a friend. Look for signs of infection first, right?”

My NP doesn’t roll her eyes, but it might be killing her. “Well, someone should figure out when they last had a tetanus shot. That’s what someone should do first. And then someone should keep an eye out for swelling or redness.”

Right. Tetanus. I must have had a shot in the last 10 years. Which, my goddess of an NP confirms when she sends me an email giving me the exact date of that booster – before she goes to bed that night – because NPs fucking rule.

And now, two weeks later? You’d barely even notice it. What might have killed a gal in 1922, is now a tiny blip thanks to medicine and the magical tetanus vaccine. AMAZEBALLS!