A stitch in a long time!

On a Saturday a long standing wish came true. After a long time, I finally got some stitches!

When i was a kid, I used to jump around all the time. I was a hyper active child with ants in my pants. Running around everywhere and jumping on anything. I remember getting hurt all the time. Falling, scrapping, cuts, wounds everywhere. Both my knees bear marks of the fun i had, and along with that both my elbows as well - and both my eyebrows!

I remember three instances of stitches very well. All of them happened when i was less than 10 years old. In no particular order - the first one. A place as exotic as Nepal. I was jumping from one bed to another in the room in Kathmandu. I so clearly remember jumping around and thats all i remember. It seems i jumped from one bed to another and in the process of doing so - I rammed into the air conditioner in the room. I had to be rushed to the hospital and that is the origin story of the mark on my eye brow above my left eye. My mom tells me that I kept shouting that i am not going to cry “i am Jeetendra” or so she says. All that bravado disappeared the moment i 

The second one - I remember waking up in the middle of the night as I had fallen down from my bed. My dad comes in and asks what happened, and the next thing I know - I am being wheeled to the hospital in Dubai. It seems they heard me crying and came in. I fell off the bed and the side table had a sharp corner that cut through the eyebrow on the right. Shit hit the roof in the middle of the night. Then dad had the corners rounded and I always had a fear of sharp edges near the bed. Thats why i never had a sharp edge near mine or Jispa’s and thats also why I would always throw a few pillows on the floor near Jispa’s bed. Even the floor can get hard.

The third one was when I was playing in school with my brothers friends. I remember jumping over a pile of concrete bricks arranged  in way that the diagonal point is pointing upwards. The top point just cut through my trailing right knee. I remember seeing my white flesh and two red lines passing through. Then all the friends came in and rushed me to the school clinic. They bandaged me and the main doc said call his home and send him. This task was left to the peon. the peon calls up and tells mom that its not a big thing and it seems ok. Mom was like, ok send him in the bus. In the evening when dad reaches home, he sees the wound and boom - we rush to the hospital. It was a big wound and the stitches were painful. The scene is that since it took so long to get the stitches, the marks remained. I used to play with that fleshy bit for a long time to come. Now that I think of it, I haven't had the chance to really look at the scar since a long time.

After that I had a lot of falls and tumbles, but thankfully never stitches. In fact I used to try an avoid them. I remember once or twice get bad cuts but I used to be scolded for the falls and so I tried to get them fixed without stitches. Just keep them together with the dressing. in fact at one point i had so many wounds that parents did not even notice that i had one more!

So after that when I grew up I always wondered what it would be to get stitches. And I never did get any. Till last week before last. I was at a  friends place and to make a call I entered the balcony. I must closed the glass french windows behind me. As I was talking the call dropped. I tried calling but it did not connect, so to get back in I turned around with the phone in my right hand. Bang, Crash - i hit the glass door with my hands and the glass cracked and came down. At that time when all the glass came crashing down, I remember thinking about another close shave that i had. Once with Friends we had gone to the Barista coffee shop at Regal cinema. There was a kid with us - a bit of a hyper kid. Suddenly before anyone knew he had got out of the cafe and was on the footpath going somewhere. I screamed ‘Ali’ and tried to go behind him. As I pushed the door to get out, crack - the glass door had a small thing to stop it from opening outside. The door simply split in half horizontally and the top part remained where it was and the bottom part simply pushed ahead. The crack of the top part  was just above my hand and the sharp glass simply scratched my hand mildly leaving just white scratch marks as if done by fingernails. That was a close shave. Even one inch lower would have been enough to cut my skin real bad.

So as the glass of the door crashed down, I thought abut the door in Barista and thought - wow another close shave. Jasmine came rushing in from the other side and saw me and was wondering what happened. Nothing really i said. I checked my right hand - ok - the phone was still there - intact. And then I saw my left hand - the glass had cut through the webbing of the first and second finger by making a cut at least an inch deep. A clean cut that i could see through and through. I then told Jasmine “Jasmine - I will have to be rushed”. She tried to remove the glass so that I could get out. By then the bleeding had started and it was a rush of blood. My friends also ran in and then i got a towel and everyone started wondering where to take me. I suggested a few hospitals but Jasmine was clear. Hospitals would take too much time and the traffic was not worth risking. I guess everyone thought that i would possibly bleed to death.

The thing about being 40 and getting hurt is that you know how to deal with the situation. When I got cut I did not even feel a thing. So when i saw the ugly cut, i could have panicked. But to my surprise, i did not. I kept my wits about myself. I stayed cool and calm. We discussed hospitals and treatments and were generally cool. I remember thinking about a joke and laughing. I remember seeing Jasmine very troubled, so I tried more to remain calm and happy. Take charge and relax. Control your speed of thought and see everything in slow motion. Thats the bets way to do it. Any times a theoretical question is asked of you an you never know what you will actually do in such  situation. When the chance came - i was happy I redeemed my self. Controlled action. When everyone is going to panic, the least you can do a patient is not panic. I was happy that my wits were good enough to even flex my fingers soon after the cut and then telling my wife - all cool, no nerves cut or something worse (basically thats the tendon cut test, as I learnt later)

So then we rushed to a clinic that was open on Saturday and got my stitches done. It was a fun experience. First to stop the flow of blood, the compounder asked me to hold my hand high up in the air post which the doctor took me in for the stitches. After putting a local anaesthetic he started sewing up the wound while we walked about things in life. It seems he was a childhood friend of my first cousin and we spoke about some common stuff. I told him that i was happy to see him without ties as i had read somewhere that the tries carry the most amount of pathogens and add no practical value to a doctors life. He said he ditched the tie once he saw that a light coloured tie had become dark around the knot from dirt that comes with everyday handling. 

I had gotten stitches before, but i wanted to see the procedure for my self. This time I could see it well enough. i was in my spirits and happy. The doctor had asked me if i would prefer a local or a general anaesthetic that would put me off completely. Crazy - I got a wound this big after 30 years - i wasn't going to leave this chance to see the procedure in person.

I guess i take this learning thing way too seriously. I have to have to learn from everyone and everything. What a life if not spoiled by learning!

an apple a day makes the dad's day

We have been on an apple spree these days. There has been a general uproar in India about apples and the fact that the foreign imported ones come coated with wax etc. if any one has ever seen and felt a Washington apple then they would completely agree. The beautiful red cherry of an apple. I have opened the bowling attack a few times while playing cricket in the past and the apple sure feels like a rand new ball. I just want to run hard in and bowl an apple at the batsman at full pace. The idea is not to bowl it short and make it bounce but just short of full length so that it gives ample time for the bowl to swing. In this case the apple. Sorry... I think I got carried away, but the apples do look lovely red and shiny. Much like the wax fruits we played with as kids.
So we haven’t been eating those. The good Indian ones aren’t to be seen around. I hate the ones that aren’t hard and crunchy. The Indian ones we get seem to be soft and soggy types. At home we call them rava apples. Like the rava upma we eat at udipi restaurants, with all grainy grainy inside. Somebody in office called them phus phus apples.
So no desi apples and no Washington apples. Enter the Chinese apples. Like all idiotic patriotic Indians we are and will be wary of anything Chinese. Even their apples will be fake. Jasmine once bought them nevertheless. These are the pinkish ones and rounder than the Washington ones. We tested for wax. The nail test - in which you try and scrape the wax away. Negative. So picked them and washed then and one bite later we were hooked. Nice and sweet and crunchy. The last word is the key. A crunchy juicy apple that you have to take care while eating in front of someone lest you spill or actually spurt a few drops on their face. Hmmmm.
I love cutting apples for Jispa. In my earlier posts I have blogged about loving to do for Jispa what I loved my dad doing for me. Cutting apples is a vivid memory. He used to love cutting fruits for us and somehow I remember the apple cutting the best. Outside home he used to beautifully cut off the skin. I wondered how he could do that. Now when we are outside I love doing that for Jispa. At home I love slicing these apples for her. So that she can take a plate full of them and eat and read, slowly slowly. After she recovered from typhoid, she ate like a horse and everyday in the evening after a heavy dinner she would get hungry and I would cut an apple for her.
But what my dad did I do it, better. or rather funnier, or lets just plain different. No qualitative description, just ‘different’ will do. What’s the point of cutting an apple if you cant do it differently and interestingly.
So while doing it differently I chanced upon this style which I think is pretty cool. I take an apple and slice it from the side. Slowly and thin wafer slices of apples. The crunchy apples remain so and they feel quite awesome. Eating round thin slices of apples. You cut from the side till you hit the middle and then from the other side. The closer you got o the middle the wafer begins to resemble a heart. Awwwwwww. Aw come one. Have a heart. hehehehe. See the heart shaped slice.

The rest of the apple cuts look like this.

The apple thins…

After the cuts done from all four sides you have the inner core. That was always a pain to remove once you dice them the normal way. This way the core comes out pretty cool and that’s what the dad typically has to finish off as his reward. :)

I know it’s pretty trivial but I love it. It just makes my being a dad more fun. More complete … I dunno. I loved cutting it this way and Jispa loves it when I cut it this way. Who else is there to see?