The Deadly Art of Dish Washing.

Thursday 21 June 2007...

Mother's everywhere worry about their children being out late at night. What do they get up to? Are they being safe? Will they make the right choices and stay out of trouble? Yet not a single concern is given, in fact, mothers often encourage, their children to participate in the deadly art of dish washing.

Yes, dish washing. After traveling, by road, more than half way across a country that contains more perils than a Batman movie, dish washing, the day after my return, is what floors me (quite literally). It is my number two most serious accident, in my life, right after breaking a leg skateboarding. Let me explain.

I was washing the dishes, around about midday. I had the dish cloth inside a glass, wiping around the inner rim when a piece of the glasses side breaks off. My right hand continued to turn in the glass, into the leading edge of the break, slicing deeply into the lower back of my thumb. Shi...ouch!

As you can imagine, blood starts pouring out. I'm thinking 'this isn't good', dropped the rest of the glass into the water, grabbed the dish cloth, covered the wound and applied pressure. Now what?

At that moment I hear my partner pull into the drive way, returning home from work. A minute or two later she walks into the dining area, sees me holding the dish cloth on my hand, over the sink and asks "are you okay?"

"No, I just sliced my hand open on a glass."

She rushes to get our first aid kit as my head starts to spin. Coming back, my partner has time to move me away from the sink to the serving bench, take away the dish cloth and bandage the wound (which appears to have stopped bleeding from what I saw). All the while my head is spinning and I'm trying to stay upright.

I've never fainted before. Not even when I broke my leg. I have a theory. When I broke my leg the pain was so great that my brain couldn't do anything but think 'oh my god that hurts, oh my god that hurts, did I mention that hurts?' etc. When I sliced my hand open, whilst the initial cut hurt, after that, there wasn't really any unbearable pain just blood pouring out where it shouldn't. Therefore, my brain had time to think, 'this looks really serious - if I tune out and live in denial maybe it will go away?'

I guess my partner helped me down to the kitchen floor, where I woke up, what I imagine to be seconds later, lying down. She had gone off to quickly lock up the house and phone the doctor. My head was still spinning but lying on the kitchen floor was really uncomfortable and probably very worrying. I got up walked myself into the lounge and flopped onto a couch.

By the time the doctor had been phoned, my head was starting to level out again and I was feeling a little better. From this point on I was able to walk to the car and into the doctors surgery where I had five stitches put in and a fairly impressive looking bandage applied to cover the damage. Afterwards my partner and I went out to lunch as planned.

As I'm writing this it is nearly two days after the accident. I still have my bandage on. It comes off this afternoon. In eight days the stitches will be removed. I'm okay really. Don't worry too much. I've kept the hand elevated and haven't really experienced much pain at all.

However, the trauma I experienced whilst washing dishes has scared me for life. I don't think I'll be able to go near a kitchen sink or wash another dish ever again. The memories of that fateful day are just too much to bare. Washing dishes is far too dangerous and life threatening... well that's my story anyway. Not that anyone believes me.

My partner bought one of those 'mop on a stick' type dish washing utensils so I would never have to stick my hand into a glass to clean it again. I guess she believes in the idea of 'if you fall off a horse you've just gotta dust yourself off and get right back up there and ride it again'.