Friday, April 30, 2010

I should have been a doctor

I had a fun experience today at school. I had a student come up to me at the end of class and say, "Miss Lacey, I sewed my finger. I need a new needle to replace my old one." At the beginning of the semester, I told them if they ever sew their finger, they need to replace their needle for cleanliness reasons. I asked if she was okay, and she said she was fine...just a little shocked that she had gotten herself. As I was replacing her needle, I asked her where the broken part went (it usually goes flying somewhere...into an eye last year...that was fun). She wasn't sure where it went, but I figured it would get vacuumed up tonight.

A few minutes later she came up to me again and said, "Umm, I think there's a little piece of the needle in my finger. It hurts really bad. I looked at her finger and saw a little piece of needle sticking out! It looked like a little sliver, so I got out my tweezers. I tried pulling it, but the tweezers kept slipping.

So I pulled out the big guns...or my new surgical clamps I bought for cleaning out junk in my machines. I started pulling on it and realized we had a problem...this needle was deeper than we thought.

So I took her out in the hall (students were starting to stare and she was getting embarrassed). I got a good grip on it and started to pull. It was then we realized that the needle went through her ENTIRE finger! It was poking out both sides! I felt so bad because I couldn't get a grip on it. I was about to send her to the office, but I wanted to try one more time. So I clamped it and pulled hard. And I almost died when I saw how big it was!It's over 1/4". Did you notice her blood on it? Don't worry, I put it in a plastic bag. I asked her if she wanted to keep it, and she said, "NO WAY!" I might see if her mom wants to keep it. :) If not, I'll keep it to show my students every year to scare them enough to keep their fingers away!

Anyway, the girl was such a champ. I felt so bad for her, though. While I was pulling it out, I tried to distract her and talk to her. She was telling me how she's had a week full of problems like this. TGIF!

4 comments:

heather said...

That is HUGE! Wow, I didn't think you could actually sew your finger.
So I also didn't know that you taught sewing. Is it Home Economics? So cool.

Jake and Shell said...

Yikes!! Yes, you should have been a doctor. There have been many times I've wished we had a doctor in the family!! Maybe you should just marry one ;)

Mindy Curtis said...

Oh middle-schoolers! Things like this MORTIFY me. I was always scared TO DEATH that I would have a kid cut off a finger or nail their hand to a board or something crazy like that. I came out lucky I guess. Only slivers and scrapes. You handled this amazingly well nice job!

...Laura... said...

Oh my gosh I did that once, but the needle didn't break, I was just temporarily attached to the sewing machine and I had to have my hubby turn the nob to try and get it out. I was pretty much hysterical! I'm surprised your student handled it so well! That is a very scary thing!