Night before last as I was headed to bed, I stumbled as I was passing through the dining/music/miscellaneous storage room and rapped my left foot's little toe hard against my organ's solid wood bench.
My foot went one way but my little toe decided to do a split. I didn't notice immediately that it literally split, and the tear in between my little toe and its neighbor was bleeding like a stuck pig. Bright red was pooling up around my foot as my little toe stood out at a 90º angle. I limped over to grab a hand full of paper towels and managed to make it to the bathroom, where I was able to prop my left foot on the toilet seat allowing the blood to drip into the bowl instead of continuing to pool on the floor.
Luckily, my emergency first aid supplies are kept in an over the toilet cabinet, so I was well positioned to get what I needed. I drenched my left foot with hydrogen peroxide, then used some 4x4 sterile gauze to stop the blood flow long enough to place a folded 2x2 sterile gauze pad between my two toes (moving my little toe back into place) and wedged it down to the torn slit. I put some clean 4x4's on the top and bottom of my foot and then wrapped a short length of elastic bandage. That ended my Friday evening.
Saturday I thought about going to the VA Hospital Emergency Room (a 21 mile dive), but dithered around and decided to wait until Sunday when traffic wouldn't be as bad. I found out this morning that a blizzard was expected to hit Chicago area around 4pm so off I went after some pain meds had kicked in. I felt rather silly about going an ER for a "stubbed toe," but it's good that I did. X-Rays showed that the second joint of my little toe is broken. They cleaned the tear, bathed it in betadine, and re-bandaged it. I have to go to the podiatry clinic next Thursday so they can do a follow up, and adjust my treatment if necessary.
So for the next ten days I have to bathe my wound with betadine, check for any excessive swelling, redness, or pus coming from the wound. Anti-biotics 4x/day as well. I am also clunking around in a special shoe until it's all healed up since I can't get my regular orthopedic shoe on my left foot.
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