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I was heavy drinking whiskey with my friend and a couple girls at my apartment when I was 20. I told my friend to cut me with a steak knife - we were punk rock kids and I thought I was a badass, it was very stupid. So he's giving me these light cuts that are barely bleeding on my upper arm. One of the girls says can I cut you? I said sure, and put the knife in her hand. She grabbed my wrist and went full bore at my forearm, cut me to the bone. It took some doing but I got the bleeding stopped, did a pretty bad one-handed job with a rag for a bandage.

Some other folks came over and one of them decided to fix me a better bandage. When he saw the wound he's like you need to go to the hospital, but I was intent on partying. Being the good friend that he was, he came pounding on my door the next morning at 7AM and insisted that he was taking me to the hospital.

When I got there, they found out that I didn't have health insurance and refused to treat me at all. They said it had been too long since it happened. It got severely infected and took about three months to heal and now I've got a wicked scar. American healthcare was and is a disaster.

It was appendicitis. 24h of pain. Had started rupturing.
I thought it was constipation.

(in my defense, neither my obgyn wife nor the emergency doctor on the phone were sure because I had precisely zero of the usual symptoms)

Did you bring your arm with you?

Wife is bringing it in. I told her not to bother but you know how they are... worry worry worry.

What about your other arm? Where is it?

Oh I forgot to tell her about that one...shhh it's ok I'm fine. I don't think I even need to be here.

hacks off limb

Wife: You should go to the ER.

Me: Nah, it'll grow back.

Synchronicity. I was have a conversation today with someone who’d been a nurse in rural NSW. Who was saying that they knew shit was about to hit the fan when a farmer rocked up on his own in AED.

As a former husband who got talked into going - more than once, can confirm.

That, or when a horse girl says she's in pain. There is never any unfounded whinge from horse girl.

I remember my mom washing her immersion blender. She always left it plugged in and turned it on in the dish water, so the blades get clean. One day, she was trying to wash the cap at the same time and caught her index in the immersion blender. She turned down my advice to go to the ER, she rather had me tape the finger. It was of no use, gauze would just instantly get soaked and started dripping blood. But she still didn't feel the need to go to the ER because "that will heal, I had worse".

Spoiler alert, when she couldn't sleep that night because of throbbing pain, she asked me to take her to the ER. They were pretty mad at her and asked her why she didn't come instantly. 6 stitches and a load of antibiotics.