“I’m injured!” My sister said on Monday when I called. She has been having some back problems lately and she bent over to pick up some magazines when her back went out. She was lying paralyzed, except for the hand holding the phone I guess, on the couch. She did say she could wiggle her toes. Poor thing! I felt so much sympathy for her because I have had back problems for years.
My sister and I always have to copy each other. If she is quilting then I have to quilt. If she starts running then I have to run. If I build a new headboard then she has to build one just like it except better. If she injures her back then I have to injure myself. Which is exactly what happened. I called her the next day to see how she was doing but I really wanted to tell her what happened to me.
“I’m injured!” I said.
“Oh no, what happened?”
“I hurt my thumb in a refrigerator accident!” Doesn’t that sound better than hurting your back in a magazine accident? A refrigerator is a big heavy object. It could fall on a body part and crush the life right out of it.
Except that’s not what happened. I was putting some food away and a bowl fell on my thumb. I really do not know how something could fall two inches and land on my thumb hard enough to cause so much pain that I was doubled up trying not to puke up my lunch. I started having cold sweats and had to sit down. I breathed deeply, waiting for the pain to subside.
Except it didn’t. It throbbed continuously all day long. Finally when we got home that afternoon I decided I was going to have to perform surgery on myself. I had read all about it in another
blog just a few days ago and by golly if a ten year old could do it then I could do it. I got out the drill and the smallest bit I could find and started drilling a hole in my nail so the blood could squirt out and relieve the pressure.
I really do not enjoy things like this. I was standing over the sink with the weapon in my hand telling the kids, “If I pass out and hit my head and don’t wake up then call 911.” My 8 year old calmed my fears and steadied my hand by yelling, “Don’t do it Mom! It’s going to hurt so, so bad! Listen to me! I’m telling you, don’t do it!”
Now I understand those stories about people who are in the woods and get their arm stuck beneath a fallen tree and have to saw it off, their arm, not the tree, to save their life. My thumb hurt so badly that I was willing, although terrified, to take a drill to it.
After one brief shocking moment of pain when I hit finger instead of nail, I dropped.to my knees and cried. The kids thought I was joking until I moved my hands away from my face and my 8 year old said, “Those are really real tears!” I drug myself to the couch and cried some more. Not because there was no spurting blood, all I had gotten was one disappointing drop, and not because of the pain. I think it was from relief that, in my stupidity, I had managed not to drill a hole right through my finger. It also might have just been for the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the gym that night and I’d miss my workout.
