A little piece of me

I've mentioned previously that my bunsen burner is awesome. The flame is gigantic, and when it is on it sort of resembles a rocket burner. In fact, the flame of my burner is so large that when I ignite it, every other flame in the lab decreases in size. Yeah, I might be a little bit of a pyro.

On Monday, my glove and bunsen burner conspired against me, and I lost a hunk of my little finger as a result. I am not sure what happened. My flame was on, blazing as usual, and I was transferring media into a few culture tubes. At some point, an uncapped permanent marker went flying and I tried to grab it, or avoid it (I am not sure which), losing focus on my mammoth flame. Nanoseconds later I felt intense pain as my glove and skin became united. My first reaction was to rip the glove off, but when I did this, only a portion of the glove came off. The pinky-finger portion was still attached to my finger, so I tried again. This time I successfully removed the glove, only to find that a dime-sized piece of skin was missing, which I located in my glove.

Luckily there was no pain associated with ripping off the hunk of skin. However, as I said, I'm no stranger to burns, so I new that I was in store for some intense pain. All in all, I think it sucked pretty bad. It wasn't enough pain to make me cry, but it did make me shout a few curse words while jumping up and down. Thankfully, my coworker, who writes over at Nondiscovery blog, helped me bandage it up and apply some burn ointment. (Thanks again!!)

Now, I have gross meaty flesh on the side of my left hand.

Damn I hate Mondays.