Thanks, Mark. You bring up another point: emergency rooms and hospitals are full of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, spread around by all the people with weakened immunity. They try to keep the places clean and sterile, but it's usually a losing battle. I hope I never have any lacerations or broken bones, etc., which would force me to use an emergency room. Life is uncertain, but I try to minimize professional medical care to the greatest extent possible. I may end up paying for this attitude in the end, but so far it has served me well. I do a few things like capping teeth when they break, etc. I'd instantly go get help if I thought I had a bad appendix ... but for chronic stuff which doctors don't seem very good at, I stay away. I'm sorry to hear what an awful time you had. Table saws give me the willies. I always feel safer with bandsaws, but they can be dangerous as well, because of one's greater confidence. Susan At 10:41 AM 08/03/2001 -0700, Mark wrote: >Susan, > >You did the right thing. The evidence is that it healed without >complication. In my case, I went the whole doctor/hospital route - ER, >surgery, everything. For me it turned out that I'd been better off with >minimal professional care, since the infection in the bone was probably an >opportunistic infection from the first surgery. The ER doc that took care of >me is a personal friend. He said later that he wished he had just sewn my >finger in the ER and skipped the Orthopedic consult. Hindsight is 20/20. I >have an elderly friend from Cuba. He has an old injury that looks exactly >like mine that he got from whacking his finger with a machete while >harvesting pineapple. He said that he just bound it up and let it heal. > > >Mark Story. RPT >Eastern Washington University >Cheney, Washington > > > >If it had gotten infected I would have taken it to a doc. I'm not sure if >what I did was the "right" thing, but it worked for me. > >I felt like a prize idiot. I already knew that using one's left hand as a >vise is a classic invitation to bodily harm. I had even written about it, >for heaven's sake! > >Go on, everyone, tell us your mishaps. Maybe I'll feel better ... > >Susan
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