This is My Thumb: An Allegory

This is my thumb. There is nothing extraordinary about it. It is not particularly attractive. It is about as normal a thumb as you will find. It serves me well, and I am rather attached to it. The whole “opposable thumb” idea was a winner from the get-go.

If you look closer, you can see something wrong with my thumb:

See that dark triangle? It does not belong there. I know it doesn’t look like much, but looks can be deceiving. I could give you twenty chances to guess what it is, but you probably never would. The culprit?

A shrimp. To be more specific, a deliciously decadent Cajun BBQ shrimp. Oh, man they are tasty. They look like this:

But you have to peel them, and that’s where I messed up.

I wasn’t being careful. I was peeling and talking to my EC, when a needle-like shard of shrimp shell slid up under my thumbnail and broke off. Yes, it was crazy sharp. Yes, it was covered with a delicious spicy sauce. And yes, it hurt like the dickens!  I couldn’t believe how much it hurt! I tried not to do the pain dance in my chair, and I did control my language, but Yikes!

Sitting at the table, I tried to get the sliver out. I couldn’t. I didn’t have any tweezers or anything to grab it with. From the restaurant, we went to the airport, (This was in New Orleans a week ago) and then home. By the time I got home six hours later, my thumb was was angry, red and swollen.

That night, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I grabbed some tweezers, a needle, and went to work. 15 minutes later, I had a bloody, swollen thumb, with a shrimp shell firmly embedded even deeper under the nail.

And then the infection set in. (Sorry, but didn’t think to take a picture at the time.)

My thumb got swollen and hyper-sensitive. It hurt to pick things up, it even hurt to text or type. My EC encouraged me to put some ointment under there to fight the infection and help deaden the pain. It did, somewhat.

It was only after I worked my thumb into a raging fire that I bothered to sit down and read about how to extract a sliver from under the thumbnail.  What did I read? Use a needle/Don’t use a needle. Cut the fingernail back/Don’t cut the fingernail back. Do it quickly/Wait and let it grow out. Total contradictions, depending on what webpage or video I watched.

I figured I had better turn to more reliable medical sources.  The first rule? Don’t dig around with a needle or tweezers, because you might cause an infection.  Oops. Now you tell me.

The proper way is to be patient, and take your time to do it right. If that doesn’t work, you need to get help from an expert.

So, I waited. Over the past week the swelling and redness went down, as did most of the infection. But not all. I was aware of it most of the time. I was especially aware of the pain late at night, as I was trying to fall asleep. In those quiet moments, when there was nothing else going on, my thumb would start throbbing – reminding me that the sliver was still there, and that I needed to do something about it.

The sliver also bothered me most when I was trying to do more delicate, sensitive tasks. Tasks that required a gentle pinch. The more subtle the pressure on my thumb, the more it hurt. If you and asked me to thread a needle, I don’t think I would have been able to do it.

I am first to admit that a sore thumb is not the greatest physical ailment that I, or anyone else, has ever experienced. Yes, you can call me a baby. On the list of catastrophic injuries, shellfish under the thumbnail isn’t even mentioned.  But, that irritating little sliver did make a disproportional impact.

Fast forward to today.

Even though I thought I could just ignore the sliver and move on with my life, it just got to be intolerable. My thumb is not meant to hurt all the time, and it is not meant to house foreign shellfish.

I carefully followed the instructions that I had learned. A little bit of trimming here, a little bit of pulling there, and a little bit of tweezing – and viola! I got it out. Yes, the process hurt. A lot.

My thumb felt immediately better, and now you can’t even tell where the shell was. I was happy that I was able to take care of it, because I knew that the next step was to go get help from an expert.

This one, I could handle by myself – but it was close.

So now, my thumb is shrimp-free, and feeling good. It won’t get in the way of sensitive tasks, and the hurting won’t keep me up at night.