First Aid Crash Course #1: How to Deal with a Cut
One fateful thursday afternoon, while preparing for my last AB214 class, I decided to trim my eyebrows. So I reached out for my eyebrow knife and did e motion of opening e plastic cover that I had always remembered to put it back (or at least until now that is). And tada~ I sliced my left hand middle finger! Coz I forgot to put back e cover e previous time I used it. So I did e opening motion without e dumb plastic cover. Den I see blood. Blood, blood and more blood. My first reaction wasn’t tears or screams. I placed my right hand under my finger (worried tat e blood might drip onto e floor n I have to clean up later), walked to e door, wore my slippers n chiong to e toilet. Still bleeding, I press e tap, n starting washing e cut. OUCH shit damn pain, but I kept e water running anyway (coz of my first aid background, tat was e only thing tat was in my mind “wash, wash, must clean e wound b4 doing anything else”) n kept staring at e water n my blood mixing together… den I realized e sch’s white sink is turning pink. Reminded me when we were kids mixing watercolour. Blood=red, water=white. Haha. Ok back. It suddenly dawned on me “why my blood keep coming out??? I thought it’ll stop jus after a while… did I miss out any step to treat my cut?” Den I started panicking. In an attempt to stop any more blood leaving my finger, I pressed onto e wound itself. No more blood, tap stopped running, just me staring at myself back from e mirror. “Now wat?” I thought to myself. “back to e room ba. Since I don’t need water le.” So I walked back to my room with my right hand fingers tightly wrapped around my wounded finger. I stepped into e room n called out “ruishannnnnn, jiuming ah… I cut my finger n e bleeding wont stop. How how how how how?” (yes she was in e room all e time n didn’t realized I cut my finger) blah blah blah blah blah (relating wat happened to rs) finally when rs wanna help me handiplus e cut, I was afraid to release my right hand fingers tat were pressing against my wound. No.1 I don’t want to see blood flowing nonstop again, no.2 I don’t want to feel e pain again (coz I was applying quite an amount of strength, so was numbing in a sense). Blah blah blah blah blah blah (rs reasoning/coaxing me to let her handiplus my wound) anyway, when I finally finally let go, my finger was not bleeding anymore!!!
Question: ok smart ppl/first aid guru wanna be, so wat went wrong??
Answer: time’s up! When u have a cut, u shld try to stop e bleeding FIRST by finding a point where u can apply pressure to n stop/slow down e bleeding. Try NOT TO do anything directly to your wound as it can be easily contaminated. CLEAN your wound with running water b4 applying any antiseptic/handiplus.
***think I was in mild shock state when I first cut myself. So I screwed up e steps scared myself to death which made me went into a deeper shock. Class dismissed. :D