Monday, June 16, 2008

Trouble in Phalanges Land

Last week I had some surgery (very minor) on my right big toe. It’s the “Going to market piggy” if you are keeping score at home.

An ingrown toenail had gotten out of control and after moaning about it for a couple days, I decided to hit the local InstaCare and take care of the problem.

I’ve never really much trouble with ingrown toenails, so I might have brought this upon myself with an improper clipping technique. Important safety tip: Straight across the nail, do NOT curve down toward the ends, you are only asking for trouble apparently.

I’ll spare you the blood- and puss-filled details, but you should know that getting the lidocaine shot(s) in my toe was the worst part of that procedure.

Though watching while the doc took a pair of scissors and snipped off the nail from the tip of my numb toe down the cuticle ranks right up there in the realm of “freaky things I wish I’d never seen” (#1 on that list: the shower scene from Fat Camp Video Highlights, 1997)

Anyway, I spent the weekend in bed with my foot propped up and popping pain pills. Yes, I’m still on the pills here at work, in case the you can’t tell from my prose right now.

Also! My throat hurts because on Saturday while putting on a pair of pants, I slipped and knocked my bandaged toe on milk crate in our bedroom. You may think, “You slipped and smacked your wounded toe on a milk crate, why is it that your throat hurts?” Excellent question; my throat hurts because I screamed so loud and for so long that my throat got irritated.

Let this be a lesson to all of you: pants should always be optional.

Really, I screamed like you wouldn’t believe. Really, my throat hurt later because of it.

Here’s the image I’ll leave with you: Me, stoned to the gills on legal opiates, writhing around on the bed where I had fallen after hitting the milk crate dead on with my bandaged toe, right leg up in the air and clutching it at the calf, because I didn’t dare venture touching any closer to my actual toe, pants half on and yelling so loudly that eventually people came from down the street to see if I was OK.

More Also Stuff! Reha and the kids got me a nice hat for Father’s Day and while trying it on, I put my hand in range of the ceiling fan. Luckily, I was hopped up on opiates so I couldn’t really feel that. Though I will say this: the fan was spinning on “high” and when I stuck my hand up there, the blades came to a dead stop. Very cool. Except for the part where my hand instantly swelled up to the size of a catcher’s mitt. That wasn’t very cool.

And Even More from the Also Category! I went back to the InstaCare doctor on Saturday, because I was basically out of pain pills and my little milk crate incident had caused the toe to bleed and ooze through the 17 layers of bandages and I wanted to have it checked out. (OK, mostly I wanted more pain pills, but that’s not the important part of the story.)

The important part of the re-visit to the doc was that while the nurse was re-bandaging my toe she pressed down on it and I may have let slip something along the lines of: “Oh! Oh, please stop touching my toe.” I may have kind of yelled this with a strong emphasis on the “oh” part that made me sound like a very “fancy” lad. Maybe. I admit nothing.

Reha about busted a gut laughing at that point. “Jon, she has to touch your toe to bandage it. Stop being a baby.”

“Oh give me a break, Ms. ‘screaming so loud during childbirth that the mid-wife admonished you “less yelling, more pushing!"‘“

At which point, both the nurse and my wife stopped and gave me a look that said, “Oh no, you did NOT just compare your stupid toe injury to the pain of giving birth, Mr. “I have a penis and a teeny toe wound Man,” did you?”

“Wait, no, I’m NOT comparing this toe pain to childbirth. Not at all. I’m sure your unmedicated labor pain and pushing a human out your vagina was much worse than this little thing. I’m just saying I wasn’t ready for her to squeeze my toe and it hurt quite a bit and that you screamed A LOT during Ellis’ birth. That’s all.”

And then I had to walk/hobble home from the InstaCare facility.

Jon scribbled this mess on 06/16/08 at 12:05 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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