Beakers, Blood and Band-Aids (A true story)

Every Monday, I have my Organic Chemistry lab. This past Monday's was a little more eventful than past labs. Let me start at the beginning.

At the beginning of lab, I take out all of the glassware that I need, and if something needs to be cleaned, I must clean it (don't want to mix the new lab stuff with the previous lab stuff). I try to clean at the end of lab, but sometimes you just need to do a little bit more. For this lab, I had to clean a 250 mL beaker. No big deal, so I clean that, and bring it back to my lab station. Then I drop it and it breaks. Whoops, but not the first time I've done something like that. Not a big deal, until after I start cleaning up, because all of a sudden, my thumb is a little bit of pain. Not much, but still worth looki...OH MY GOSH MY THUMB IS COVERED IN BLOOD (okay, I didn't shout this, but I was thinking it). Well, that sucks.

I finish cleaning up the glass, being extra careful. Then, I do enough until I can get a band-aid to stop the bleeding and not get an infection. Wash my hands, wrap it in a paper towel, yada yada yada. I figure that there are band-aids upstairs in the stock room, and I have to go up there anyway to get a new beaker. So I do. The people upstairs are pretty friendly, and they gave me quite a few band-aids. I put one on, they gave me a few more just in case, and it should be no big deal. Right?

Well, I put my beaker on the table, and decide to wash off my hands again (because although my thumb is bandaged up, I still had some extra blood where the band-aid couldn't cover, once again, no big deal). I look inside my band-aid, and realize that it is covered in blood. And I mean, covered (see also, useless). Well, got to replace it. Of course, this becomes difficult, because as soon as I try to place another one on there, it quickly becomes covered in blood like the first. Now this is a big problem.

Now, if you've ever taken a lab class at Michigan State, you'd know that it would be grade suicide to miss one. So, I've got a bloody thumb that won't stop bleeding, a lab to do that I'm already falling behind on because of all of this, and only a small glimmer of hope that maybe the stock room would have some gauze tape (also, a very likely trip to Olin Medical Center, and I hate going to the doctor's if it is at all avoidable). Luckily, when I went up there, they managed to have some, and gave me a hand taping it on. That managed to stop the bleeding, and I finally felt okay about completing my lab and maybe, maybe not going to Olin. After I signed a few forms (so I can't sue the Chem department, I guess), I went and finished my lab. It ended up being uneventful.

The end of lab arrives. I'm anxious to head home, take off my gauze pad, and figure out what to do with it. The cut did look deep at first, but when I took off the gauze (to my surprise) there was no blood. None at all! Maybe this would be okay after all. That is, until I started to move my thumb. Some blood came out, and I decided (with help from my roommate Josh) to go to Olin after all.

I don't like to go to the doctor. I guess I kind of have too much of a god complex to admit that something is wrong with me that I need to see a doctor for. This should give you an idea how concerned I was. Anyways, I get to Olin, and the lady at the front desk is not really that helpful. After finally getting an answer I was looking for, I went over to Urgent Care. That went better. The person at the desk was more helpful. After waiting for a few minutes, a nurse comes to take a look at things. Of course, they ask me questions about allergies, medical conditions, etc. and take my height, weight and blood pressure. Finally, she looks at my finger and says "Well, a doctor needs to look at this". Great.... I have a quick chance to eat, and then get back so a doctor can look at it and hopefully stitch it up. When the doctor comes by, she asks me the EXACT SAME QUESTIONS the nurse asked me. Apparently, they thought that I could develop an allergy over 15 minutes and know about it or something. Finally, the doctor decides that I need stitches and injects some lidocaine in my thumb. And everything appears fine.

Since I had a lab report due the next day, I ask the doctor how long the lidocaine lasts, and she says about a half hour. Cool. I can take a small break, my thumb will be fine, and I can do everything I need to do. Of course, an hour passes and my thumb is still completely numb. Normally this wouldn't concern me, but my mother has an allergy to many medicines/numbing agents. I wasn't showing her symptoms like shortness of breath, but my thumb being numb for longer than I expected makes me concerned. My roommate, who's dad is a doctor, kindly calls his dad and asks him how long lidocaine takes to wear off. He said a couple of hours. Great job Olin! You ended up only being off by 4 hours! Well, everything seems to be going fine since then.

This is my story, and I'm sticking to it.