Yesterday I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and I saw these two pictures.
As I mindlessly scrolled past, I thought to myself “Hey! That looks like the lemon arch I cut my hand on, what are the odds that someone else is doing that design...”
Well, turns out the odds are zero. Lol. One of the girls I used to work with posted it, along with her side of the story.
Back in college I used to manage a flower shop at Mizzou.
One cold and dreary Saturday morning, 12 years ago yesterday, I got up early and went into work by myself. We had a big event that weekend, a lemon themed Italian brunch that the chancellor’s wife was hosting.
I had worked on it all week with the other girls, getting us as far ahead as I could, but I was worried that the lemons would brown, so I left them for last to do that morning before I delivered.
Well, long story short, I was using my good ole floral knife to poke a hole in one because I was afraid I would stab myself with the floral pic I was going to use to hold it into the arrangement...clearly I should have been more worried about the knife than the pic, because low and behold, the knife slipped over the lemon and came down in my palm.
It was like a cartoon, blood was spraying out like a sprinkler. I grabbed a towel, shoved it on my hand and thought “Oh Shit. I think I actually need to go to the hospital”
Side note, at this point in my life, I had never been to the ER before.
I tried to call Daniel, he didn’t answer, so I took off RUNNING down the street to the hospital. After about half a block the towel was dripping blood and I realized that running was probably making me bleed more, so I made myself walk calmly the rest of the way.
I got to the hospital, and had to wait in line behind a bunch of stupid frat boys with hangovers. (Insert comments about the failures of privatized health care here) But eventually Daniel met me there.
Finally I got to see the doctor. I kept telling him “I can’t feel my thumb!!!” And he was just being a general dumbass, making jokes with Daniel about how he did a telecousre in medicine, and used to be a truck driver. I wanted to kill them both. He did a shitty job stitching me up (5 stitches) and set me an appointment with a specialist the next week.
Well...it turns out I had cut through a major nerve in my hand. 2 weeks later when my stitches were almost healed, I had to have a surgery to repair it. The doctor pulled the two ends of my nerve back into place and put in a plastic tube to make a channel for it to grow through. (25 stitches that time)
I had no feeling in my thumb for the next two years while the nerve grew back all the way out to the tip. It still turns purple when the wether changes, and randomly gets tingly down the side.
But I’m totally fine.
ANYWAY.
For awhile I thought I wanted to be a florist. Clearly- I didn’t end up as one. But there was another girl who worked as a teaching assistant, I always thought she was cool. She seemed creative and she told me once that she helped her Aunt or mom or something do floral arranging...our advisor called her in to help on this lemon crisis, and now she’s a successful florist, and I’m a person who only arranges flowers for fun.
THE END