Years ago, I want to say twenty-five? There was a knitter in our town who, stepping out her front door, tripped and fell and landed on her knitting needle in her knitting bag. From the description, I’ve always assumed it was a metal straight.

The firefighters wanted to pull it out as they put her into the ambulance. She told them, Don’t you touch that!

In the ER, the x-rays showed that the needle had pierced her heart and that if they had done that at the scene she would have bled right out.

The staff also told the woman, Did you know you have breast cancer?

She did not.

Being stabbed through the heart with a knitting needle saved her life and I remember there was some later news story that showed she did survive the cancer because they had caught it early enough.

I thought of that woman today, whatever her name was–just not quite soon enough.

I had the afghan laid out on the floor and was sitting on and off it, going back and forth between chain stitches on a crochet needle and a long thick sturdy metal yarn sewing needle, try this, rip, try that, okay that’s better, working out how to add details.

At one point I realized I’d dropped the yarn needle. Not seeing where it must have gone I looked some more, then swished my hands around a bit trying to get it to appear, and finally decided it must be caught up in my skirt so I went to stand up to shake it out.

It was upright in the carpet and went straight into the lower part of my knee with my partial weight on it, going about half an inch in.

The nurse on the phone: Was the needle dirty?

Me: Well, I didn’t exactly disinfect it first, I mean, yarn…

She wince-chuckled. Yeah, alright, okay, looks like your last tetanus was two years ago.

She asked me to describe the pain. I said, well, that’s the thing: I have to rely on other ways of telling me I really messed up because I often don’t feel pain in my extremities anymore (no, not diabetic) and if I do, it’s often over after five minutes even if it sure shouldn’t be. Which is nice–but dangerous. But it doesn’t feel right and it’s a bit stiff and hard to bend or straighten all the way, it does hurt a little sometimes, yes it did bleed, and I figure tomorrow it will probably be worse.

That it likely would, she agreed, and set me up for tomorrow morning early.

Just, no secondary cancer diagnosis thankyouverymuch, that’s my one request.

Two hours later I looked at that afghan, thought horse-that-threw-you thoughts, and tried to get back down there with it and my knee went yeah no hon.

Oh. Okay then.