I have a booboo

You know how everyone has one of those "I was playing catch with my kids and somehow wound up with a stick in my a**" stories? Well, I have one. Not a stick in my a**! A story. I have a story. 

The short version is that I broke off a piece of metal under my thumbnail. AAAAAND I didn't even say a bad word when it happened! I'm really making some positive strides. The long version goes like this:

The small metal wire that goes through the spine of my wallet was coming out. 

Just ignore the receipts hanging out.

My wallet was laying on the counter and this little wire was staring at me and mocking me all day, and ruining my idea of a perfect world. So, I decided to push it back in and make it shut up. I grabbed a pen cap, because I'm smart enough to not use my bare hand to push the wire. Duh. And after about my third good "oomph", the cap slipped and the wire went under my thumbnail. 

Ouch. 

Ouch. 

Ouch. 

At first, I though maybe the dark spot was just a blood blister from the impact, but as the day grew long, I could tell that it was hurting more and I could feel the metal putting pressure on my nail. It was the size of a boulder! At least it felt like it. I tried to see if I could dig it out, but I'm apparently not that tough. Remember the guy who cut his arm off to save his life when he was pinned by rocks? Yeah, that's not me. I would have died, pinned under the rocks, and probably would have never been found. I can tolerate a lot of pain, but the thought of extracting a bullet out of my leg or cutting off my own arm or digging a piece of metal out from under my nail just don't sound like situations that I would be particularly successful at. So, off to the walk-in clinic I went. 

Ignore my nasty cuticles and pasty, dry whiteness. It's winter, in Oklahoma, and I have red hair. Dry and white is what I am. 

The black dot is the culprit. I swear it had a twelve inch circumference. 

And this is my nail after.  The doctor used a scalpel to slice my nail in two, then she used tweezers and forceps to pull it apart and to get a chunk of it detached so she could then use razor sharp tweezers to scrape the metal out. When she told me what she was going to do I asked her if I would at least get the pleasure of her numbing and deadening my thumb first. 

Um..........no. 

Say what?

She said the numbing process would be more painful than just doing the procedure without it. 

Say what, again?

So, no numbing stuff. Boo on that. I had my left knee bent and my foot underneath my right leg, so I stuck my fingers behind my knee to keep my hand steady, locked my thumb in place as best I could, and let the butchering begin. In all actuality, her slicing my nail in two didn't really hurt. When she put pressure on top of the piece of metal, that hurt. When she stuck the tweezers up under my nail, that hurt (and it bled a little). When she scraped that thing out ..... OMG!!! Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. That's what I kept telling myself. And then I let out a big, "Whoohoo!" when she was finished.

I got some ointment and a bandaid for my booboo and they sent me home. I'm so glad I don't have fake nails. That would have sucked!

And the doctor thanked me for coming in because it gave her something to do besides treat sinus infections. Hahaha!!