This is a bit of a specialist question but any answers or help are welcome!! I'm desperate. I was using a mandolin to slice onions and well . . . yeah. There's about a 1cm gouge missing :/ it's about 3-4mm deep, the nail is fine luckily, completely untouched, but when you look at your thumb and usually see the skin surrounding the nail, I only have that on one side. On the other there's a clean diagonal line where tissue should be. When I managed to take a small look at it I was really freaked out to begin with, I saw white and thought it was bone! Then I started to think logically and realized what an idiot I was (bone is blatently only a few mm below the skin . . :p) Is this tissue/ligament or something? It bled a ridiculous amount. Seriously, i just couldn't stem it, whenever I took pressure or the padding off it, blood just emerged from it and ran down my hand. My Mum and I sort of patched it up - sprayed it with antiseptic (OW. and three times ow, I really didn't want to have to do that) and wrapped it in kitchen paper followed by a mini bandage fabric thing. It started to tingle a bit and really throbbed but then died down. I needed a shower so we tied a plastic supermarket bag around my hand to stop it getting wet and we sort of rebandaged it afterwards - took the fabriccy thing off and just clipped the paper towel in size since it seemed to have stemmed the bleeding. Now it's got more fabriccy thing on all over and it's taped with sticky tape. What can I expect tomorrow? And how long do you guys think it will take to heal? Anyone have any personal experience with this kind of thing? I'm supposed to be cooking for a New Years party tomorrow :/ Thanks! Happy New Year I mostly kept my hand above my heart afterwards, do you think this helped?