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What CFers Do: Stab Themselves With Hypodermic Needles

Owie!!Hi, I’m Jesse and I’m weird.

OK, you already knew that, but try this on for size. I have a decent-sized list of things that I have visions of happening. Bad things. Worst case scenario things. Here are a few:

  • mis-stepping on the first step going downstairs and tumbling down and cracking my head on the shoe chest at the foot of the stairs
  • bleeding to death from a papercut
  • biting my tongue off coughing
  • busting my jugular out coughing (have you seen that thing stick out?)
  • popping the tube off the end of my port or pulling it out of my clavicle vein and bleeding to death
  • stepping on something sharp that goes clear through my foot
  • ending up in the water doing jet skis or tubing and having a gator eat me or one of those worm parasites climb up my you know what… and bleeding to death
  • stabbing myself in the eye or hand with a hypodermic needle when adding saline to my Colistin vials

Well, that’s quite a strange list, but that last one happened today. Not my eye. Not my hand.

My pinkie AND my ring finger. More precisely, my ring finger through my pinkie finger. Please, allow me to explain before I lose my audience for fear that my stupidity is contagious.

I was holding the vial upside down in my left hand and clasped the cap on the syringe with my pinkie and ring fingers. Perfectly normal. What follows was not.

I pulled on the cap, using my usual micro-resistance so I don’t pull too hard and make some wild movement and stab myself in the eye (see aforementioned list). Apparently I used too much resistance this time (macro-resistance, perhaps), and I drove the needle straight through the outside of my pinkie, under the fleshy part, back out the inside of it, and into the outside of my ring finger… and back out in the blink of an eye! I was like a sewing machine.

It started bleeding from the insertion point on my pinkie immediately and profusely. I soon noticed that my ring finger was bleeding. “Son of a gun! I poked myself twice,” I thought. Not sure those were my actual words in my head, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. After squeezing my pinkie for a couple of minutes because it refused to stop gushing, I noticed it starting to leak out the other side when I let off pressure. “Son of a gun! I impaled myself clean through,” I thought, again not sure but sticking to it.

Beautiful thinks I should have left it in my fingers to take a photo of it, but all I have is this lousy photo of my Band-Aid brand owie-strip. At least it wouldn’t have bled until I pulled the needle out.

Oh, and in case any of you are wondering, yes, it really, really, really hurts to do that.

At least I stuck myself with my own darn needle.