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 fiberglass 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 everywhere.

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 slashed his leg really deep as the glass swung 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 patchwork 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' pictures but this is absolutely the first medical use of duct tape I have ever seen! AWESOME!"