leigh ann

I started to end February in high hopes. I got my braces removed, started my dental procedures afterwards – cleaning and fluoride and cavity finding, and on February 27th burnt the absolute bitch out of my hand.

I’ll spare you the gruesome details and photos (I’ll only show my wrapped hand don’t worry) but the day began as most day before my weekend starts. Since Friday is my work from home day I use the hour I would normally spend getting ready for work to cook up some good breakfast. Workdays in office breakfasts consist of larabars, black tea, yogurt, and sometimes an air-fried hashbrown if I can get it in within the first ten minutes of walking up.

Fridays are bacon, sasuage, egg, oven-baked hashbrowns kind of days. This one was going as scheduled until I overturned the entire pan of bacon grease on my left hand, my dominant hand!!!, trying to dispose of it.

Boy oh boy did that shit fucking hurt. I feel like I don’t even remember exactly how painful, thanks trauma blocking!, but I know it was too painful.

I didn’t cry or panic or scream anything more than a distressed fuck. Thanks to years of home-cooking and my senior high school culinary training my hand was under the sink faucet before the “ck” was out of my mouth.

Usually the kitchen sink spits out water that is much too cool but it was a blessing on this morning. I kept rotating my hand under the water and removed my jewelry, including my wedding ring, and scrubbed the oil off with some unremembered brand of dish soap. It’s green if that helps. My roommate cleaned up all my spilled grease and my husband walked down to the Shoppers to retrieve burn cream and bandages.

I kept my hand underwater in a tupperware container for about thirty minutes, cycling the water out to keep it ice cold. I did eat some of the bacon while I waited because you would not believe how many people have asked that question over the past couple of weeks.

Honestly, the burn hurt like you wouldn’t believe but nothing split or blistered so I rang Urgent Care and got an appointment in a couple hours later. I’ve been chastised about this on a later. Apparently if you get burned go to the Emergency Room not matter what! But even a few of the nurses and doctors who reviewed my charts said it actually didn’t look as bad as it got (spoiler!) when I first came in.

So if you’re wondering why I’ve been MIA – my hands been an immoveable brick of pain that can do nothing but exist, shed dead skin, and regrow new skin in its place.

Luckily on the writing aspect I was able to submit to a few places before I broiled my hand but my website has been neglected. I’ve been in and out of Urgent Care every two days and just transferred out to a Clinic today. I have a plastic surgeon referral sitting somewhere in the system but no calls regarding that yet. There’s been concern about the way my thumb is healing up but other than that I’ve been getting comments like “wow” and “that looks good” and “it’s healing great”. Which is hard to believe when I’ve watched my hand swell and blister and ooze and at some point it was kinda lumpy liquidy. I’m still in my molting stage so I’m on three days at the Clinic. and my dressing is down to bandages and netting.

I’ve been encouraged to type and to keep moving my thumbs and fingers. So here I am coming back to my website with an excuse for my disappearance. I hope you all can forgive me.

I’ve had some other big stuff going on behind the scenes that I’ll get to when I get to. But I hope I can regain the posting groove I managed to maintain in the first two months of the year. I tend to not do something once and never do it again. I haven’t been reading or writing or gaming much either because of the hand situation, just lounging around catastrophizing about my life. Feeling kinda useless.

Obviously I still have time in the healing process. But according to all health professionals I’m on the up and up. And that means more writing in the future.