Sometimes I Mess Up

…so I’m grateful for people who know how to fix my mistakes. And who do it kindly and without blame.

Because this week?

I made a couple of doozies.

I’ll just tell you about one of them here, though.

Two days after our unexpected May snowfall, I headed out for a run. But before I could get to my favorite running path, I had to walk up our street past the weeds.

There are a lot of weeds these days.

I hadn’t planned to weed. Remember? My plan was to run. But I often say things to myself like, “I will only pull ten weeds! And that will be helpful. If I pulled ten weeds a day, how much progress I would make in a year’s time!” Also, the ground was beautifully, tantalizingly wet after that glorious May rain and snow. The weeds were basically begging to be pulled. 

Except when I was grabbing weeds that circled around the electric pole up at the corner, I got a little too close to it, and it bit me, leaving a splinter about an inch long sticking out of my right index finger.

I did not want to go all the way back to the house for the tweezers after this unfortunate encounter with the electric pole. I was heading out for a run, after all. I wasn’t even supposed to be pulling that many weeds. Ten was the goal. Just ten. (But they had been coming up so easily! It was hard to stop!) Then I noticed poor Biscuit, resting in the middle of our deserted street, apparently having given up on the idea that we would ever make it past the corner, that he would get to go on any kind of outing at all. So I looked at the splinter, reached out with my left hand, and yanked at it, which ended up being a very bad idea, since it broke off basically under the left side of my nailbed.

Not my best decision ever.

I went for my run anyway, and thought I would just soak my finger with a little Epsom salts when I got home, and probably it would be OK.

That kinda worked? I got most of the splinter out. Except most is not a good word to use to describe a splinter that is under your nailbed.

I tried to pry the tweezers under the side of my nail to get the last bit out. That only made my finger hurt, and the remaining splinter did not budge.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a throbbing finger. 

You may remember that I am a massage therapist. It is a very bad thing to have a problem with any finger, but especially a finger on my right hand.

Luckily, though, we have modern medicine. Luckily for me, there was an appointment at the local urgent care center, the next day at 4:00 pm. Luckily for me, the doctor there looked at my finger and said, “Oh! I can get that out!” because the nurse who took my blood pressure and looked at my finger first said she wasn’t so sure, that maybe they would send me home to see if it worked its way out on its own.

So the doctor walked with me down to the Procedure Room (because the light was better there.) He warned me, though, not to look at my finger as he worked on it, and said of course that the lidocaine would hurt a little. He also said that he was not at all surprised that I couldn’t pry the darn thing out with my tweezers because anything that has to do with pulling fingernails is horrific and wasn’t that what they did to torture prisoners? 

I was grateful for the little pinch of the lidocaine, and for the confidence of the doctor, and how he got that splinter out in about thirty seconds. He said he didn’t think it would need antibiotics. He said that it probably wouldn’t even hurt very much, that an Advil tonight would be sufficient.

So many things to learn still. Like if you get a splinter, you should really stop the weeding, change the running plan, and go back to the house to pull the thing out with tweezers. As it is, I will have an urgent care bill and a finger that was achy for a few hours. But wow. Just wow. So much gratitude for modern medicine, for lidocaine and doctors who handle annoying and painful accidental injuries with grace and kindness.