Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Supplies Needed: 800 mg Ibuprofen and Flipflops

About a year and a half ago, in one of my usual clumsy moments, I opened the door to my room over my foot, which caught my toenail, and ripped a big bloody chunk of nail off the side. It bled. It hurt. But in the end it was only a small section and I figured it would heal okay.

I was wrong, of course. It got worse, bit by bit, the damaged part oh-so slowly growing until eventually, this August, I realized I had myself a deep, painful, and completely out-of-control ingrown toenail. I tried everything. I got pedicures, where the asian lady mercilessly ripped skin away from my nail. I did my own home version of surgery, cutting away at both the nail and the fleshy part around it. Not much changed. It still hurt. I still felt a constant pressure on my toe. I guess I was lucky, though. When I first met Cole a few years ago, his charming way of flirting with me was to show off his puffy, pus-filled infected toe. Yes, Cole was the first person to introduce me to how horribly wrong a toe can go. My own foot never got like that. Thank God. When Cole got surgery on his foot it tooks months to heal, it looked aweful, and to this day I can't stand looking at his feet.

So basically, I had toe surgery today. My foot is all bandaged up to the size of a golf ball - I can barely fit it into my flipflops. The surgery experience was something I hope I never have to go through again. The doctor was nice, but I don't handle pain well. First he jabbed an incredibly long needle into my toe - the anasthetic barely kicked in by the third time he stuck me, each time in a different place, and that last time he went deeper than before and the pain was excruciating. Basically I sat there thinking "Oh my god, sure I can handle this, but how the hell am I going to have children? I don't want kids. I don't want kids. Oh my god, I don't want to feel anything like this ever again." He wrapped a tourniquet around the base of my big toe, too, and that just made it worse. Basically, I spent about 10 minutes twitching and breathing heavily and occasionally whimpering and just generally not having a good time of it. Then he took the tourniquet off, lowered my foot, and I forgot everything. Last night Nick and I were talking about the human ability to completely forget pain. Trust me, I remember the pain. I can recall the needle jabbing into my poor toe perfectly, the squeezing of my toe that made me think it would drop off in just a few more moments if he didn't remove that rubber tubing.

No comments: