I, OTOH, cut off the tip of my thumb by cutting vegetables in a NZ shelter while distracted by talking to another backpacker. “That onion slice doesn’t look like the others. . . where’s that ketchup coming from?”
Crap, crapity, crap! We’re at the start of two backpacking trips and popping off to an ER is really not in the cards. So I let it bleed freely to flush stuff out. Thankfully, I’d been washing and prep’ing veggies so my hands were pretty clean of bacteria. I knew a doc would stitch it back on, but maybe I could bandage it in place? I stuck the detached bit back on, pressed it firmly with my forefinger, elevated it for a LONG time (I’ve long used extended periods of elevation – 15+ minutes – with good success for cuts. I figure you have to give it time to clot a far amount). Then I tried to keep it clean and moist the next 10 days of backpacking and camping. And moist. That’s a big advantage of topical antibiotic creams – by keeping the edges of a wound from drying out, you can get better healing.
2 years later, it’s still there. I did change my fingerprint slightly because I’d replaced it with a different rotation. Maybe it’ll confuse the FBI?
So let things get dirty and bad things happen.
Keep things clean and you can have a good outcome.
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