I started work on the exterior hurricane shutters for the kitchen windows. Now the first thing you might ask is … Why hurricane shutters? Well we don’t have hurricanes up here but what we do have is a neighbor’s house that is really close with a kitchen window that directly faces into our kitchen window. Now while we have a 5 foot privacy fence between our houses, their house sits on top of a 4 foot retaining wall so they can see directly over the fence into our kitchen. Instead of blocking out our windows with blinds or shades I came across the idea of using hurricane shutters which get mounted to the exterior similar to the way an awning does.
The shutters I am building will be 4’6″” tall with one being 4’6″” wide and the other being 10′ wide. The smaller one will have 2 panels each with about 48, 1.5″” slats tilted at a 45 degree angle and spaced 1″” apart. The larger one will have 4 panels with the same slat layout.
I am building the smaller shutter first and ripped down all the vertical framing pieces. I was in the process of cutting out the 3/8″” slats when my table saw kicked back the stock I was feeding. Somehow when it happened I nicked my right index finger on the saw blade. At first I didn’t think I had cut it all that bad. I went inside, called up to Steph that I had cut myself. Steph brought down the first aid stuff, band aids, ointment, etc. I flushed out the cut at the kitchen sink. I got a good look at it, it was a rather deep cut about 1/4″” into the tip of my finger.
I was getting ready to bandage the cut up when I had Steph get me a chair. I felt a little woozy. It wasn’t until just after I sat down that I realized that I was going to pass out. Steph says I passed out 2x for 30 seconds and 20 seconds. I just remember once so I would guess that I passed out for almost a minute. I didn’t loose that much blood, nor have I ever been affected by the sight of blood and I’ve had cuts much worse than this. (Like when I drilled through the webbing by my thumb on my right hand.) At any rate I don’t know what happened but I did pass out so Steph called 911.
I ended up lying on the floor until the paramedics got there. They gave me O2, checked my blood pressure, pulse and blood sugar. With the exception of my blood pressure, everything was normal. My blood pressure when they got there was REALLY low even for a person that has low-bloodpressure it was only 80/40. By the time they left and Steph and I left for the hospital my blood pressure was only up to 107/80, a little low but fairly normal for me.
We had to wait for about 2 hours at the urgent care center. By the time we saw a doctor, the wound had mostly healed itself probably because of the constant pressure we had kept it under. The cut was now only a surface cut. My nail was cracked and some skin missing but the 1/4″” cut had closed and most of the bleeding had stopped. They cleaned the blood but decided that because the cut had closed there was no need for stitches, so they dressed the wound and released me.
Well the shutter project is on hold for a week or two. It is sort of a pain to type. All in all it’s not so bad but it will probably hurt in the morning.
