Stitches

I was listening to the radio a few days ago, and the topic came up of how many times the DJs had gotten stitches.  They took listener calls for stories, and I listened to a variety of people describe the times in their lives that they'd been injured or had surgery that required a form of stitches.

It got me to thinking; how many times have I had stitches?

Seven.

I was eleven the first time I had stitches due to a surgery. The surgery was a result of an injury I sustained when I was six. I was at Konkel Park, a local park in Greenfield, WI near where I grew up. I was with my Grandma Betty (you read that right) watching her dentist's baseball team play. (Crazy the details you remember, right?)  I slipped on the metal bleacher I had been walking on, landing directly on my lady bits.  My mom picked me up from the park and took me to a nearby urgent care where a doctor decided I was too young to go through the trauma of freezing the area and getting stitches. Unfortunately, as I grew and the skin that had been damaged began to grow apart from the rest of the area, leaving me with an awkward flap of skin on my right side.  At eleven, it started to become as issue.  We all know adolescence is hard enough on kids, but this piece of skin was getting in the way of simple things like menstruation pads and tampons.  So, I had reconstructive surgery on the area and all was right with the world after that... or at least with my va-jay-jay.

The second time I received stitches I was 21.  My brother was over at my apartment with my boyfriend at the time.  I was doing dishes in the kitchen sink and a casserole dish slipped out of my hand while I was washing it.  While attempting to catch the dish, my hand dipped into the water with it and was still on the dish as it broke into a variety of jagged pieces.  Needless to say one of those pieces sliced open my middle finger on my left hand.  I held the wound closed with a kitchen towel, calmly walked into the living room to the men, and explained they should probably take me to urgent care.  At first they thought I was joking, but once I showed them the cut they loaded me into the car and I received seven stitches on my finger.

The third time was when Desmond was born. Without going into too many details, I can tell you that it was only seven stitches; the same amount as my middle finger two years prior. The fourth time was when Evelyn was born. That was one stitch, but one is enough.

The fifth time I had stitches was when they put my power port in.  That was only ten or so stitches.  The sixth was when I had my mastectomy which is too many stitches to count, and the seventh was when I had my hysterectomy.  The hysterectomy was through laparoscopy, so it was five tiny incisions with three or four stitches each.

The thing about stitches is, when it's a good thing like a baby being born they seem like no big deal. When they are a cut finger, or surgery because of cancer, they carry a different weight.

I am curious though, I'd love to hear from of my friends and get their stitches stories!!!