Jay was fixing his motorcycle in the garage. Janie and Thomas were running around being silly. I honestly have no idea where Berto was. And I figured I'd do a little housework while everyone else was occupied.
But then that darn salad tong decided it needed freedom and did a jackknife out of the silverware basket. It hurt. Oh my gosh did it ever hurt. The best I can figure is that the sharpest part of this spork-like salad tong landed in just the wrong spot, hitting a nerve and slicing my skin.
I yelped and groaned and snorted and didn't curse! But oh golly it hurt!
Janie and Thomas came running to see what happened. Thomas was fascinated by the blood, of course.
When I say it hurt, I'm seriously downplaying the pain. There are not polite words to describe my agony. I could not move because my body was not responding to any signals other than *ALERT ALERT ALERT INCREDIBLE PAIN ALERT ALL HANDS (toes?) ON DECK*. Seriously, I thought for sure once the blood was cleaned up I would see bone or at least the complete removal of my toenail.
So I stood there gritting my teeth trying to keep my big girl panties on so as not to freak out my little ones. I managed to breath out instructions for Janie to go get her dad. What felt like several minutes (it was probably only something like 30 seconds but when you're immobilized by the pain of what could possibly be you toe-capitation time is a bit skewed) and at least three requests later, he finally came in.
Now picture this: I'm standing there, holding onto Berto's highchair for dear life, weeping silent tears, gritting my teeth to keep from uttering unkind words at the salad fork from hell while blood is slowly pooling around my maimed appendage, and Jay walls in all calm-like and says "what's up?"
It is probably a good thing I couldn't speak at that point.
Luckily my sweet two-year-old came to my rescue, exclaiming "mommy hort! See beeding! Owie." Unluckily, he also felt the need to point it out. Apparently Jay got the idea when I yelped again.
Being the wonderful knight in shining armor that he is, Jay got pain aids, ointment, all that other stuff needed, cleaned me (and the floor) up, got me all bandaged and used me as an example of a good way to react to pain ("is mommy yelling and screaming and throwing a fit?" "Noooo" "see, when we get hurt, it's okay to cry, but we don't need to wail and throw tantrums"). Way to take advantage of my pain dear *thumbs up* (I do mean that seriously. Good job.)
Once he was finished I finally got coherent enough that I managed to get my body to behave and sit down. I put my foot up and eventually the pain eased. Throughout the rest of the day it still hurt, but the pain lessened and lessened (minus the occasional bump from my kids or accidental foot smash by my dear husband).
Fast forward to the morning. When it came time to take a shower, I sat down to unwrap my injured toe. I had to prepare mentally for this. I didn't know exactly what to expect, because I had closed my eyes against the pain almost as soon as it hit. So I could only imagine the gruesome sight the bandage-removal would reveal. How bad would my toe look? Would I have a nail? Would I be black and blue? Would I have to deal with an ugly scar for the rest of my life?
Slowly I peeled back the bandaid.
Guys, maybe half a centimeter of cuticle is missing. That's it.
No bruising, no broken or visible bone, no puncture wound. Just a tiny little cut that's barely visible.
But seriously: blinding, searing, immobilizing, agonizing pain.
You have such a way with words. Thank you for sharing this, you're my hero!
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