Fair Warning: This post will mostly deal with medical topics, so if you don’t like that, maybe skip this post! Also, I’m fine. Read on if you want details.

Monday started out not so great – walking 30 minutes to class in the pouring rain, giving a presentation on a topic I don’t really care about, etc. BUT! The sun came out after my last class and I got to walk home watching the sun set. Here’s a picture:

Then, it took a turn for the worse again. About 5pm I was washing dishes and broke a glass (why am I incapable of doing dishes safely?), leaving about an inch long cut in my left palm near my thumb. I’ll spare some of the details, but luckily my roommate who is a nursing student was there and helped me stop bleeding. She looked at it and thought it needed stitches, so we wrapped it up and went to the clinic at the hospital. After a nurse cleaned it out, she agreed that I needed stitches and would need to see a doctor. Being a foreigner in Sweden, I had to pay for it first! The doctor gave me three stitches, and it’s not an experience I would recommend to anyone…

Anyway, I left the clinic and hopped back on the bus to go home. Things were fine for about three hours or so until I somehow aggravated the wound (and we think a small artery) and caused quite a lot of high pressure bleeding under the skin. After making a mess of my bathroom, my roommate helped me to calm down and we eventually decided to call an ambulance. The paramedics agreed that I needed to go to the ER so they wrapped it up tightly and off we went. After arriving at the ER, I waited for about 50 minutes before seeing a doctor and nurse. I was really worried they’d have to reopen the wound and redo the stitches, but it didn’t come to that. The doctor simply pressed on the pocket of blood under the skin to release it through the wound, then rewrapped it with a pressure bandage. I waited for another hour and then the nurse rewrapped it and told me I could go home. As she realized I have no idea what I was doing, she helped me call a taxi so I could actually get home!

So that was my Monday, and early hours of Tuesday. Since then, it’s been nearly painless and I’ve been trying to only use my right hand as much as possible. Do you know how hard it is to open a banana or a bag of chips with one hand? I just changed the bandage for the first time with the help of my previously mentioned and extremely helpful roommate and it feels relatively good so I should be able to get the stitches out next week.

Berlin this weekend I hope? I think I should be able to manage. Even if I just go for the Philharmonic.

I’ll try to keep myself together for the few more weeks I’m here (about 3.5 to go)!