Full Finger Functionality

I almost have it. My right index finger is still maybe a week away from being totally useful, and my left thumb still has a patch of raw skin, making me hit the spacebar with a different finger.

The weekend before election night I was hanging laundry on my balcony when a frog casually leaped into my apartment and hid behind some furniture. I couldn’t find it. The next day I came home and found it dead on my bedroom floor. Poor frog asphyxiated itself on the dust under my bed.

I swept it into a dustpan, into a plastic bag, and out into the trash. I joked that I hoped I wouldn’t get any warts on my hands from nearly handling it. A few days later my hands had disgusting, liquid filled bubbles on it. And no, the warts never came.

Election night was a pretty memorable night for a lot of people. Americans turned out in huge numbers and made history by electing the first mixed race president. Some people held watch parties, thousands went to Grant Park in Chicago in anticipation of Obama’s victory speech. It was a momentous and memorable night for a lot of people. It was a memorable night for me too, only, from what I remember, I don’t remember a heck of a lot about the presidential election.

Just before seven that Tuesday evening a half dozen or so volunteers descended on the air conditioned/cabled TVed/guaranteed electricitied apartment of one of the organization’s staff members. We all made different food, or in my case were planning to there. I have become a sort of expert in making tostones. Tostones are plaintains, cut, fried in oil, squished into a patty, and then fried again. How could I not love something that’s fried twice? It’s a finger food and I eat them with ketchup, so I guess they’re a little like french fries. With nine plaintains in tow, I went to work making dozens of tostones. I had basically finished just as the first results were coming in from Indiana (remember we’re an hour ahead now).

I turned off the stove, grabbed a few tostones and checked out what was happening on CNN. I remember it was something like 51% McCain, 48% Obama with few precincts reporting. That was probably the only percentage I saw until Wednesday morning. These few minutes with the stove off may have saved me from something much worse, or it may have really made no difference, who knows.

The room became a little smoky as the fan above the stove did little to suck up smoke coming from the pan of oil still sitting on the stove. Weird, I remember thinking to myself, it never smoked like that the almost two dozen times I’d made tostones before. I decided to move the pan to the back burner, directly underneath the fan. I grabbed a towel for my hand and went to grab the pan.

This is where stuff gets weird. Against the direction that I was moving it, the pan somehow became unbalanced and came crashing down towards me off the front of the stove.

What’s your instinctual reaction anytime you see something falling? Exactly. Terrible idea.

“Oh sh-t.” That was the only thing I said out loud, quietly to myself, as the hot oil came cascading down over my hands. “My hands are going to be messed up for the rest of my life” was my first inward thought.

Bang!

The pan hit the floor and caught the attention of everyone in the room. In a blurred instant I reacted by putting my hands under the cold water of the faucet. Three people were immediately by my side to check on me. I stood there, hands under the water, quietly wondering how bad the damage was going to be. After a few minutes I tried inching part of my hands out from under the water. An excruciating sensation that is comparable to…well nothing, overtook me. The hand went right back under the water.

I stood longer, this time wondering to myself what other weird accidents could happen to me. At the end of September a broken glass (like glass of water) that I used as a candleholder sliced open my wrist, almost directly above that main artery where you take your pulse, and in the same direction of the artery. I had never been so scared in my life, bleeding profusely, I eventually got it to stop, and it turns out it wasn’t that deep. But I do have an inch long scar on my wrist. Great.

I knew this accident wouldn’t kill me, but what would it do to me. One of the volunteers who lived in southeastern Utah for the last few years told, and is a certified wilderness first responder or something like that (and I feel like anyone living there would be by default) me that blisters are bad, we don’t want blisters to form. Ten minutes under the faucet and I saw none. Maybe it’s not so bad. Then I went to bend my right index finger again and I saw it. A blister, around my whole finger, but not too too big.

It would grow. And later on it would be joined by some blister friends.

I was ready to remove my hands from the water. I did. It hurt. I walked home, pale, light headed, shaking my hands constantly as though I were shaking off water after washing them. Anything to take my mind off the pain. I got to my sister’s apartment. Ohio was called for Obama. I knew for sure he’d win.

I talked to my dad on the phone. He told me the medical steps to take from that point on. I am lucky enough to never have been to a hospital for a medical reason in my life. I wanted to, and did, keep that streak going. We took pictures of my hands and e-mailed them to him. By now the blister on my index finger was huge, my finger looked like a pig in a blanket. 1,000 mg of ibuprofen later I was asleep on an air mattress in front of my sister’s TV.

Wild cheering. I woke up. I felt pretty good, that ibuprofen stuff works. Obama won, they showed crowds going wild all over the country. I check a clock. Midnight.

McCain gives his concession speech. I’m really glad that he turned back into a human. I really like him when he’s human and not the awkward robot he was on the campaign trail.

I pass out again.

I wake up. Something is trickling down my face. What the heck is that? I turn on a light and go by the sink. Part of the blanket of the pig in a blanket broke. I look back at my pillow. There’s a huge stain is on it. There’s still plenty of fluid inside too. I wrap my finger. I look at my other fingers. Hey they don't look bad at all. Well, that assumption turned out to be wrong too. I catch a re-run of Obama’s speech on CNN (it’s 4am), and pass out. The healing process has just begun.

Considering this entry just took forever to type: To be continued.



************Warning************
Over the next few entries I will be posting pictures of my hands to coincide with the entry. Some might think they look wimpy, some might not mind, and some might lose their lunch. Just be warned. If you don't want to see it, don't scroll down.