Flexible, adaptable, and solutions-oriented

I stapled my thumb today while I was checking a stapler for jams. These staplers in the library: they are the bane of my existence. Constantly jamming, needing to be refilled with staples, breaking and needing to be repaired or replaced. I spend a lot of time performing surgery on staplers: opening them up, prying bent staples out of them, stapling over a pencil to clear a jam (if you put a pencil in the stapler's "jaws," behind the part that does the actual stapling, and press down, the jammed staples will come out) picking up broken and bent staples off of various surfaces.

In the past few months, I have become the Stapler Queen.

So imagine my surprise and shock when, while trying to close the top of an apparently broken stapler, I pressed too hard on the part that activates the mechanism, and drove a staple right into the pad of my thumb.

Oh, and this happened right in front of client.

Yeah. Just another shining moment in my brilliant career.

I know I yelled. Something like, "Aghaghahaaahhhhaowwwww!" I grabbed my hand as if I thought I could grab away the pain, and knelt down on the floor, looking at the ceiling, because I could not bring myself to look at my thumb.

I think the client said something along the lines of, "Oh my God, are you OK?"

"This has never happened to me before," I said, "but I am not going to panic."

And then I excused myself and ran out of the library, still not looking at my thumb.

I couldn't bring myself to look at it until I was in the security guards' office, getting First Aid. Half of the staple had gone about a half-an-inch deep into my thumb. The other half was sticking out like a bent car radio antenna. There was no blood, and very little pain at that point. But they didn't dare take it out themselves.

So they sent me to the hosptial in a cab.

It took:
Twenty minutes to be admitted
Another twenty minutes to be seen by a doctor
Three shots of anasthetic in my hand to freeze my thumb. The first one hurt like a sonofabitch, the other two were only marginally less painful.
Another twenty minutes wait to have the staple removed
Thirty minutes to get a tetanus shot, which again, hurt like a sonofabitchingbastard.

I went back to the office, but they sent me home to recuperate from it all, so that's why I'm posting now. I'm fine, except I'm kind of sleepy and my hand aches.

Maybe I'll take a nap.