How My Negligence Injured My Wife

It’s time I come clean. My negligence injured my wife and I felt horrible for it.

Back when I first started my journey into wet shaving and was doing all my research on how to properly shave with a straight razor or double edge, I ran across an interesting article on sharps containers. Now, those of you who are diabetic, or need to use needles on a regular basis may already be familiar with what that is. For those who aren’t, it’s a little orange-ish box that you place discarded, sharp, medical (or medical grade) objects in and then drop off at your local disposal facility. This article I read went into detail about things I’d just not thought of. It talked about why it was important to have one of these sharps containers and the logic was sound.

If you have small children, you should pick one up or make one. If you have pets, same thing. Just throwing the used blades in the trash could be a problem for anyone not expecting them to be in there. Furthermore, when your trash is processed, you place other people in harms way if you just throw the naked blades in there. If you purchase a sharps container, many pharmacies and hospitals will properly dispose of them for you since they are, technically, a bioharzard.

So, the other day, I was shaving in the shower and rushing so I took a spent blade and placed it in some toilet tissue and threw it in the trash. I pushed it down in there a bit so it wouldn’t be on the top and injure anyone, then I went on with my day.

Later that day I heard my wife let out a yell and a few choice words. She was putting something into our bathroom trash and pushed it down to tamp down the trash and pushed her forefinger into the razor I’d previously placed in the can. I ran into the bathroom to see what was wrong and saw her with her hand under running water, her finger bleeding profusely. She was clearly in a lot of pain and the cut on her finger was deep. Bad enough that I wondered if we’d need to rush her to the hospital to get stitches but one of the things you learn during CPR certification or first aid is that you bandage up the laceration and if it bleeds for more than 10 minutes, you hit a hospital. We bandaged the wound, applied pressure and within about 10 minutes, the bleeding had subsided. To be honest, I felt like scheisse because her pain was completely avoidable.

If I’d just taken the time to make, or buy, a sharps container like this one here or here, she’d not have had to be in that kind of pain or make a trip to the doctor for a tetanus/Dpt shot. But I didn’t and I hurt one of the people I love most in this world.

As we were waiting to see if the bleeding would stop, I jumped on my tablet, hit Amazon and ordered the orange sharps container immediately. Matter of fact, I ordered two. That’s a quick, painful lesson that I don’t want to repeat and one I don’t want to see you have to learn the hard way.

So, please take my advice and make, or buy, a safe place to store discarded blades. Your family, your pets, those you love will be all the safer for it.