sharp

At one point last week, I had five bandaids on my body. 

Two of them were from the dermatologist's office. She scraped off a mole - benign - and cut out a dermatofibroma - also benign. One of those (the dermatofibroma) did (does) have five stitches, though. It was 6 mm, she said, which alarmed me just a tad when I went home and consulted Dr. Google, because Dr. Google said that the average melanoma is diagnosed when it is 6 mm. 

I read that, and then I forgot about the whole thing, other than the itching - oh, the itching - until a week had gone by and I didn't get a call about the results. Apparently benign results that don't require followup aren't at the top of their list of priorities. 

For the other three bandaids, though, I have no excuse. 

My coworker brought in a block of cheese that she wasn't eating. Because she wasn't eating it, it had gotten hard on one side, and I needed to cut off the hard part to get to the good stuff.

As I put the very sharp, serrated knife against the cheese, I thought to myself, "Cutting upward like this is not a good idea," and then I continued to think (or not think, as the case may be), "Nah, it will be fine."

It was not fine. I had six long, bleeding scratches from the serrations, one bleeding round spot without skin, and I cut a chunk out of my knuckle. I thought the knuckle might need stitches, but there wasn't enough skin to stitch it together (it was a triangular hole), so I pressed on it for a while and then sealed it off with a bandaid. And then put two more on the rest of the open wounds. 

Someday, I will learn to handle sharp objects with the respect they need.