Thursday, May 5, 2011

Doctor Tales (I)

When my son was about 11 I was building a a plane in my garage.
One Neighbor asked if I was building a boat


What? No plane in YOUR garage?Well me neither anymore.  :) 

It was a fiber glass plane so surface prep and cleanliness are critical to good bonding so I had a large basket of clean rags and lots of denatured alcohol handy for cleaning any surface prior to laying down any fiberglass.

Of Course, as required by law in the south I have rolls of duct tape just every where.

So my son was taking out the trash and he is swinging the trash bag to and fro as he strolled through the garage out to the alley. Apparently there is a broken mayo jar in the trash and a big chunk of glass is sticking through the side of the trash bag. As Brian swings the bag he really slashed his leg as the glass sung by.

So I hear him yelling for help, I run out to the garage and though it's only been seconds there is already a largish pool of blood on the floor, he got himself good on that one!

Well the old Boy Scout First Aid training kicked in and said "pressure bandage" I reached into my clean rag hamper folded a hand towel sized rag into a 4 inch square and clamped it over the cut with my hand then started looking around for something to to hold it on with.... AHA! Duct tape! So I wrapped duct tape moderately tightly around leg and over the 'bandage', threw him in the truck and had him in the emergency room in less than 5 minutes.

The doctor came into the treatment room, took one look at the duct tape bandage started laughing and said, "Oh man! I gotta get a picture of this!" He was laughing and taking several pictures so I was feeling pretty self conscious that the finds my patch work so funny! I start to explain what happened and even though he was still laughing he says, "Oh no, you did the right thing! I just have a collection of 'things I have seen people do with duct tape' picutes but this is absolutly the first medical use of duct tape I have ever seen! AWESOME!"


5 comments:

The Onion said...

I like it! Way to use your resources...

I have seen a lot of laborers use superglue to seal cuts. They just throw a little solvent in there to boot. Yeowch.

Sandra said...

Have you ever heard of Red Green? He's all about the duct tape. Plus I think you and my husband are kindred spirits.

tammy said...

That was some pretty good thinking there. And I'm pretty sure I also have some redneck in my blood because I was excited when I saw that duct tape came in colors other than silver.

NerdyRedneck Rob said...

@The Onion - Ooooo, nerdy factoid time! Did'ja know the Army has experiment with if for just that purpose? Battlefield emergency first aid?

@Sandra - Ahh yes! Love the Red Green! Canadian rednecks have a special place in my heart!

@Tammy - Hmmmmmm - that is quite the dilemma - Yes, getting excited about duct tape rates pretty high on the Redneck scale but any concern at *all* about fashionability is the anti-redneck. So Since you only got excited about it because of other colors, no. No redneck for YOU! :)

Dizzy Ms. Lizzy said...

LOVE Red Green! He duct tapes everything! :)