kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Which Kethrai Injures Herself, Learns The True Meaning Of HMO, and The Value of Pain Okay, so I hurt my thumb last Sunday. I should have known it was coming, dear NSR, because of a number of convening factors-- --I am a jewelry maker and do things with my hands --I don't always use tools in the approved fashion --My Big Show starts this weekend. The first one is self-explanatory enough. If you do any sort of handwork, sooner or later you will do something to your hands. It's a rule. My sister put a sewing needle through her index finger fingernail once, my mom has smashed fingers in the garden, my da, back in the day, was a walking bruise 'n gash--his job had lots of unexpected corners to clock himself on. The man's knuckles are scar tissue, people. The second? Well, as you know, I'm rather a bash-to-fit, paint-to-cover kind of gal. When you're in the fire of inspiration, you don't always stop to think about whether you're using the right size of pliers. You grab what's handy and roll with it. So I've used highly inappropriate items to bend wire, y'all. And third--well, you have to understand I love this show. I heart it to pieces. But every year Something Happens--there was the Food Poisoning year, the Bad Roommate years, the Can't Get Confirmation On Registrations And Vendor Permit years...I guess this year was the one that Lady Fate deemed to be the Year of The Gross Thumbnail. So, armed with all this prescience, did I see this coming? Of course not. So last Sunday I was wrassling with a pendant and using some pliers to try and shove a wire across the back of the thing. The wire was stubborn, the pliers slipped, and POP! I hit the edge of my thumbnail dead on, and popped out the back end of it. Like a tiddlywink. Only still attached, just popped out over the cuticle end. (Sorry, Dear NSR, for the graphic disgustingness. It's relevant, I promise.) This was about four p.m. Being the good little insurance-card bearer that I am, I figured that the emergency room was reserved for...oh...heart attacks, and blood fountains, and busloads of children after a loony goes haywire with a hockey stick, or something. So I howled for the Darling Husband to come bind up the damage, and settled to wait for Monday morning. I woke up early, throbbing. No surprise. Since I've never really had to go to a doctor's office for a small emergency-type-thing, I called the doctor on call for the office to try and get some idea of what to do. He said reassuringly to just call the office when they opened, and they would get me in. This was at five in the morning. I called my work, explained the situation, and told them I'd be in when I could. Settled down to wait for 8am, and check with my HMO to also make sure I was doing all the right things. They said "Go to your doctor." I was thinking all was good--no ER. The one time I have been in the ER, it was ghastly. Yay. No ER. So I called my doctor when the office opened at 9am. Voicemail. The hell? They were open, right? Got called back--not by a doctor, mind you, but a nurse--which is ok, because they tend to be more sensible anyway. She said she would ask the doctor what to do, my doctor would be in at 10am (must be a nice life) and she would call me back. So I sit there. Waiting. At 10:15 she called back and said, gee, no, we don't pop thumbnails back in here, call Dr. So-and-So who's a surgeon, who we have do this stuff for us. Here's the number. Called Dr. So-and-So. Who takes Mondays off, but he always has someone covering--here's the number for Dr. This-and-That. Turns out Dr. This-and-That doesn't deal with this stuff either, call an orthopedic center--hey, it's a finger, right? or a plastic surgeon. A what? So I call the orthopedic center. They say gee, we don't do that either...besides, it's a thumbnail and isn't that Dermatology? Call back my doctor--by now it's 11:30 am, 19 hours into my damaging myself--and they say gee, go to Express Care at the ER at the hospital. (Hello, idjit, if I wanted to go to the ER at all, would I be calling your punctilious twittiness, and what the hell? Doctors don't deal with popped thumbnails, for the love of pete? Bet you don't do splinters either.) So we went. I asked in some horror to make sure that I wasn't taking the slot of some poor schmoe coming in with a blade through his gut or something, and they said no, the Express Care is designed specifically for the benefit of shiny little idjits like me who get creative with pliers. I'm seen in a remarkably short amount of time, thumbnail popped in--after two shots of Novocaine, which because I'm resistant to it, needed another shot of Lidocaine and I could still feel what he was doing; tetanus shot given, scrips for pain and infection because, after all, I'd had a popped nail for 20 hours, a minimum of 5 of which could have been prevented if someone had just sent me to fucking Express Care in the first place. Let me tell you, you do not want to walk into an emergency room, unwrap your thumb, hold it out to the PA, and have him say "Goddamn, that is WIERD. Let me go get the doctor who'll fix this. You did this HOW??" They also explained rather carefully that you know, if it had been seen to in a timely fashion, it would have hurt much less. No shit, Sherlock. And hey, it's a $50 co-pay instead, because, you know, it's the ER. Which we didn't have until I got paid again. Because--Ba-BING!!! We need a security deposit for the show--remember the show? The one with the curse? And have to conserve all available cash. Which leads one, dear NSR, to the inevitable question--what in the ninth name of god do all the carpenters and plumbers do in this bloody town when they bash their fingers? However, I am proud that I have forged two acquired pieces of wisdom as a result of this episode, dear NonScheduledReader, for your benefit-- (who says I never think of my readers, and don't say I never did nothing for you) --the actual meaning of HMO is "Heap More (shit) On" --if you ever bash your left thumbnail in this particular fashion, trust me--just opt for amputation. By now, you're wondering about the relevance, I'm sure, of the utter gruesomeness I subjected you to above (reference "tiddlywink"--got it?). Well, as you might imagine, I was not in any shape to go to work Monday. I wasn't in any shape to go to work Tuesday, either, as between the Vicodin and the conviction that a large shark with rubber teeth was knawing hopefully on my thumb had yet to abate, I was not in pleasant shape. Wednesday I made it through half a day at work. Yesterday, Thursday, I actually made it through the whole day. Now, I have a rather puritanical guilt about calling in sick to work. I don't do it unless I'm in such ghastly shape that I would be sent home if I were there. And there's nothing worse than trucking into work the day after a sick day or three and having people look at you fisheyed as if you faked it. However, strolling back into work with a splint and a quarter mile of bandages wrapped around your thumb is a graphic illustration of Why You Were Not At Work. I'm also finding that the description of the original injury is providing me a lot of mileage. I get through the description of just the injury--not even what it took to put my thumbnail back properly under its cuticle--you could actually see the skin on the backs of folks' necks heading south in fear. By the end of the story, they were doing that "oh, my god, ouch, don't wanna picture it" dance in place, with their own thumbs tucked carefully out of range. In fact, by the end of the saga, they were asking me if I should even be there. After I had told a few of the guys in the Mill, I would even see them in passing, watching me go by, tucking their thumbs out of the way in case the Thumb Karma Goddess was still around, and afraid they might catch Her attention. I'm not the only bash-to-fit, paint-to-cover tool handler around, yo. And so I can at this point--having been able to take the splint off for the first time since Monday late last night--been able to take the true measure and value of the pain involved. I've paid my dues to the curse on the show, I've learned the meaning of HMO--and the value of the pain? Hey, feel that hair slithering over the top of your skull? You trying to use your mouse by now without touching it with your thumb? Man, I could not write a GHOST story with so much creep factor, y'all. Watch your thumbs, dear NSR's, the Thumb Karma Goddess might be...near....YOU! 7:29 a.m. - 2003-01-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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