My wife, who has been a teacher and worked in the insurance industry, could have been a doctor. When I got an occasional cut or bruise, she would examine it thoroughly and attend to it with a degree of curiosity that was clinical.
She was so good at this that when my daughter’s college friend suffered an injury, the friend attempted to apply the bandage themselves, but it did not adhere. From watching her mother, my daughter knew how to wash the wound, dry it, apply the ointment on the bandage, and then the bandage to the wound, which stayed in place.
On April 11, my wife tried to squeeze in breakfast with her college friend at a diner before heading to work. Somehow, she gashed her right hand on a picture frame. There was a fair amount of blood for a deep but not too long cut. Yes, she’s had a tetanus shot relatively recently.
She called me to the bathroom. I got the antibacterial soap, she washed the wound, and I dried it. She applied two pads she had left over from her leg injury a year and a half ago. I taped the gauze tightly in two directions.
Will urgent care see her urgently?
She asked me to check the WellNow urgent care website to see if appointments were available at the Western Avenue center outside Albany. The first time listed as available was at 1:20 p.m., about four hours out, but we went anyway.
The protocol was that patients were supposed to scan the QR code inside the entryway. The screen suggested a four-hour wait, but it was less than an hour., a fact I explained to a few other patients when the receptionists were away from the desk. Of course, once my wife was called to see the physician assistant, it was another half-hour.
Still, the verdict is that my wife did not need stitches. The treatment that she had primarily administered herself had done the trick.
I don’t expect my wife to decide to prepare for medical school suddenly, but she could, and she probably would be good at it.