Achilles' Heel

Our kitchen is tiny. For some people, this would be a minor annoyance, perhaps not even a blip on the radar as they heat up another Lean Cuisine or unwrap the deli containers. For this Foodie Girl, it's a big fat pain.* There's not enough counterspace for cooking and our kitchen stuff, so we store most of our small appliances on top of the kitchen cabinets when they are not in use. It's not exactly visually pleasing, but having enough room to cook is a much higher priority to me than the chance at showing up on the cover of House Beautiful.

However, problems can arise when someone is trying to put the crockpot back on top of the cabinets while talking on the phone, in which case the heavy crock might slip out of your hands and shatter on the kitchen floor with an amazing CRASH.

And then, a couple of weeks later, said someone's wife might be padding about the kitchen early in the morning, getting ready to make coffee, when she makes the unfortunate discovery that not all of the shards were cleaned up post-crock-shattering. And that discovery might be especially unfortunate due to the fact that the rogue shard ends up embedded into the heel of her foot.

This was not especially great timing. I had a doctor's appointment that morning, and I had to wait well over a month for a slot to open up, which meant I was not going to miss it. So I had Ash bring me the tweezers and a flashlight. And then a needle. And then the peroxide. All to no avail. In fact, we both had a go at playing surgeon, employing our home version of instrument sterilization (matches and hot water) and trying to dig the stupid thing out before I finally had to concede defeat and just admit that it was NOT coming out without some professional-type medical assistance.**

Which is why Ash and I found ourselves in the urgent care center just in time to watch a horrifying few minutes of Rachel Ray's talk show while waiting to be taken back to the treatment room. The nurse practicioner smeared some lidocaine cream on my foot and sent me to have x-rays. Having confirmed that it was relatively superficial, the nurse practicioner started the procedure and it was all going swimmingly. I could hear her cutting, but I couldn't feel anything until suddenly WOW I TOTALLY FEEL THAT, and so she casually grabbed hold of my foot and announced, "OK, this will probably burn" and I FREAKED OUT.

Have I ever mentioned my needle phobia before? Because I have one, and it's bad.

I mean, yeah, nobody likes needles. Usually, when I tell someone that I have a needle phobia, they say "Ohhh, yeah, me too", but I am not talking about the garden variety, I'm-nervous-about-getting-poked-with-a-needle fear. I am talking about full blown hysteria, and no matter how much logic you try to impose on it (yes, I know that it doesn't hurt for more than a second), I just flat out panic. In that moment, she could just as easily have said "OK, I'm just going to go ahead and chop the foot off" and I would have had the exact same level of panic.

So she decided to go ahead and finish the procedure without any anesthetic.

Had I been capable of rationality at that moment, I would have instructed her to let go of my foot, back up, and give me a moment to get (as much of) a grip (as I possibly could). Then I would have been able to calm down enough to handle the shot*** and we could have gotten on with the thing. Instead, what happened was that I strained my other leg straining against the pain of having ceramic cut out of my foot.

What a lot of drama for a small piece of ceramic.

My foot was good and sore for a couple of days, but it's already pretty much healed now, save for a small scab on my heel. I do believe the kitchen floor needs a good washing, just to make sure that we won't be repeating this embarassing little journey again.


*Don't get me wrong, as far as I'm concerned, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make if it means not having to live under the Frathole and next to War Movie anymore.
** That medical degree Hulio and I were earning by watching TLC did not seem to come in handy for some reason.
*** Most likely without much grace. I'm sure lots of tears and sobbing would have been involved.