If its not one thing, its another

On Monday afternoon I was cooking dinner when I realized I had not yet repainted the toenail I messed up that morning- so I got out my nail polish and began shaking the bottle (by holding in my left hand and rapping it against the palm of my right hand). I went to the kitchen to check on dinner first...

Then on my way back to my bathroom I rapped the bottle against my palm once, and on the retract I noticed something flew above the bottle. It was nail polish. The bottle was broken and the "deeply in love" dark red trail of polish traveled down one wall, across the floor and up the other. Several globs had landed on the floor below- and even more was splattered all over my right hand. So much that I did not recognize that some of the mess on my hand was actually blood.

The mess was huge. Fortunately Matt was on his way home from work already. As he walked in the door I called to him- "it is mostly nail polish! Don't freak out!" (as I stood in the kitchen amongst a vast collection of dark red splatters with a towel wrapped tightly around my right hand) He didn't- until I told him the blood was "spurting" from the cut.

Next thing I knew we were in his car on the way to urgent care. It was 10 minutes after 5 pm. The doctor took one look and said he didn't want to stitch it up without an x-ray to rule out any "foreign body" inside the cut. X-ray was closed so he gave me an order for first thing in the morning. Tuesday morning I had the X-ray- and could tell by the tech's face and immediate reaction that there was indeed a "foreign body" in my hand. She ushered me immediately back over to Urgent Care. The same doctor peeked in minutes later and said "you've got to see this- come with me". And of course... I saw.

Dr Nagel was not comfortable with his own level of familiarity with the physiology of the hand- so he got on the phone looking a for a hand surgeon to remove it. Within a couple of hours I was scheduled for 9:45 am on Wednesday with a hand surgeon.

I got there and with one look at the X ray Dr. St Mary said he could get it out- but he wants me under general anesthetic. He told me that due to it's proximity to the ulnar artery and the ulnar nerve-which with one wrong move could cause major bleeding or permanent nerve damage- he wants me to be under general anesthetic so there is no danger of me moving my hand during the surgery. He may have to widen the cut as well. It depends on how difficult it is to locate this piece of clear glass. With general anesthetic I have to fast for at least 8 hours prior to surgery- therefore (since I had eaten breakfast) the surgery has been put off. I have the glass in my hand for one more day.

My surgery is scheduled for 12:45pm Eastern Time tomorrow. I will post again afterwards. And yes, I do have pictures. I will post those too.