Machete-fights

When I was a kid, my older brother and I were part of a gang of kids. We'd run around the woods behind the playground and ride our bikes and play baseball. Sometimes, we'd have "Free-for-All's" where we would all beat each other up. From my 7-year old memory, it was pairs of kids wrestling on the ground, throwing punches and elbows and body slams. I loved it, probably because I was the only girl so nobody hit me hard but I could hit them as hard I wanted.

We were just packing up clinic for the day when we saw a teenage boy with a bloody shirt wrapped around his hand and a throng of people marching behind him. Apparently there had been an argument, a fight and eventually, a machete. This kid, who said he was 17 but who looked 12, was the loser. His hand was split deeply open from the middle of his palm through his wrist, about 4 inches long. In between two fingers was another slice, about an inch long. I used 12mL of lidocaine to numb it up (that's 4 times the amount I usually have to use) and I put in a total of 22 stitches, the most I've ever put into one injury.



When we were done, I suggested that he stick to fistfights next time.