What do all three of these things have in common? My night last night!
I ignored the advice of my lovely wife and decided to slice some carrots using the mandoline without the guard. As the title of this post implies, the result was exactly what she expected.
So, I lost a piece of my finger...not a big deal for someone who regularly pulls people from car wrecks or performs CPR on a regular basis. I figured I would just bandage it up, take the "I TOLD YOU SO!" from my wife, and then finish up what I was doing.
NOPE!
My body had other ideas. See, I have a condition called Vaso-Vagal syndrome. What this does is make my vagus nerve misfire. Your vagus nerve is the thing that controls your heart rate and blood pressure (among other things) and is the reason that so many people pass out and/or die on the toilet from pushing too hard.
When your vagus nerve (and mine, usually) works normally, it reacts to a stressor (like slicing part of your finger off) by constricting your blood vessels (making your blood pressure increase) and your heart beat faster. Mine, however, for whatever reason decides to not work properly and does the exact opposite by dilating my blood vessels and slowing my heart rate down. This produces the expected result of me passing out.
Cue the 911 call...
...and the ambulance...
(okay, it was not a helicopter, just a standard ground ambulance, but this was the only picture I have on my hard drive...I'll have to download some of my EMS pics)
...and my co-workers from the fire department...
In the end, everything was okay and if it wasn't for some previous heart history in my family I wouldn't have even called. But, when the cardiologist says you should get it checked out if it ever happens again (this was the first time in over a decade), you follow the instructions of the incredibly smart man (or woman) who has gone to school for far longer than you ever have!
So, lessons learned:
- Mandolines are sharp
- That may not be the way to spell mandoline
- I love my firefighting family
- Listen to your wife...
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