Proper Knife Safety

Here are five simple rules for proper knife safety:

1. Never touch the knife blade. Never let the knife blade touch you.

2. Use a knife only for its intended purpose.

3. Let a falling knife fall. Do not try to catch the knife.

4. Carry knives with the cutting edge angled away from your body.

5. Never pull a knife toward any part of your body while cutting something.

Here's the story that goes along with the knife safety rules, specifically rule #5:

It's Tuesday afternoon. It's my day off work, so I've been doing some shopping, and now I'm checking out at Fred Meyer. (Well, it's Smith's Marketplace, but it used to be Fred Meyer and we still call it that to differentiate between that store and the regular Smith's grocery store. I digress.)

My cell phone rings. It's Zak. He says, "Hey, so, do you think that our insurance will cover it if I get some stitches?" WHAT?!? More explanation, please, double quick!

He had a very close encounter with a razor blade knife at work as he was trying to cut open a box that had a stubborn plastic zip-tie on it. In fact, the encounter was close enough that the razor blade struck the bone in his arm. Yeah. So a 2 centimeter portion of his wrist was laid open pre-e-tty far and he was debating as to whether or not he ought to go into the Urgent Care clinic and get it looked at or if he'd be okay to just super-glue it shut and keep on working. Good thing that his dad was there and saw the wound and decided that Zak didn't have a choice.

Luckily, he missed all essentials in the wrist, such as tendons, arteries (only a 1/2 inch away, though, if you don't mind...), etc. He needed 7 stitches to close it up and later lamented to me that he wished he hadn't allowed the doctor to use some lidocaine to numb the area up first. He was curious as to how painful it would've been to have the stitches without it. Right. Well. Moving on.

Zak's favorite part of the whole ordeal was that right after the cut happened, a spurt of blood shot a foot or two away and made a puddle on the ground. Thank goodness that he immediately applied pressure and that someone had the presence of mind to grab some gauze and tape and get a pressure bandage on it until it could be stitched up.

So that wasn't really how I was planning to spend my afternoon, but I was grateful that I had the day off work and was able to meet Zak at the Urgent Care clinic and be there while he got stitched up. Many thanks, as well, to the doctor who stitched Zak up and gave Zak basic lessons on how he could do it himself (should the need ever arise) as he stitched. (The last portion of this sentence is dripping with sarcasm--I thought I'd better make that clear in case it isn't completely obvious.) I am also glad that Barb was there to take pictures of the wound with her camera phone since I really wasn't feeling like that was something I wanted to do.

Zak is back at work today with an only-slightly-sore arm (from the tetanus shot) and has promised that he will not pull a knife toward any part of his body while he uses it to cut something.