It's merely a flesh wound

Working on finishing my basement, I suffered my first injury in the 4+ months my dad and I have spent on the project.  The ironic part is that it had little to do what I was doing. 

For whatever reason, when the builders where doing the mechanical work they did not bend over the metal sheeting that they used to hold a portion of it up to the rafters.  I was adding a vent to a completely different portion of the structure and just reached backwards as I was coming down the ladder. 

The end of the metal was very sharp and my arm was sliced pretty good.  The cut iteself was about one inch long by 1/4 inches deep and 1/2 inches wide.  I've done my best to replicate it in 2D form below, as we forgot to take a picture of it.

Take a moment and feel the skin on your arm.  It's not nearly as tight as other areas of your body.  I was amazed at how wide the gash ended up being.  Furthermore, the skin actually curled over into the wound because there was so much loose skin.  It bled pretty well but stopped after pressure was applied in about ten minutes.

 

It looked much uglier then it felt.  There was not a lot of pain associated with it.  But, it was far too gaping of a hole to just let it heal on its own so I ended up going to urgent care for treatment (however, I was scolded by my wife for convincing my parents to let me drive to the hospital alone).

Two and a half hours later, I had seven stitches in my arm.  The doctor said the skin came together well so I may not have a scar.  I need to leave them in until next Friday and then need to use steri strips to keep it together for quite a while after that.  He said that when the stitches come out my skin strength holding the cut together will only be about 10% of what it normally would be.

 

To add insult to injury, I hadn't had a tetanus shot since '97 and I ended up getting one of them too.  I also have a funny looking area on my arm with no hair and it will make me look like (more of) a weirdo then normal for a significant period of time.

P.S. Nattie is impressed by the injury and made sure to tell daycare yesterday that "Daddy has big owie."  She wants to touch it (when the bandaid is covering it up) and has asked multiple times if I am OK.  She's so sweet.