Cloudy Yarn and the Toe Butcher

I am full of excuses for why there was no yarn yesterday.

But there is yarn today:



Yes, more sock yarn. This yarn was sent by lovely Jenny as part of a Twin Cities-themed birthday package. The yarn was hand-dyed in St. Paul. Jenny said it reminded her of clouds, and as such it is completely appropriate to my new home. It does have a nice, soft cloudy look to it. This yarn will make sweet feminine socks that will be a pleasure to behold and a relief to wear. This yarn will make socks that will renew my spirit and my faith in humanity. This yarn is like wooly tea and sympathy. The yarn tells me so.

Now.

Yesterday I went to the podiatrist to have a two (or three?) week old infected ingrown toenail removed. Oh man. What you need to understand is that I am one of the most stubborn people I know when it comes to medical care. Who else would allow themselves to languish under the shadow of the lung butter (nasty resperatory infection, for the uninitiated) for a full month before finally seeking medical attention? Who else would allow their infected toe to fester into messy, bright-red hamburger (that's the podiatrist's term, by the way. Hamburger. It's an established clinical term, I'm sure) under the delusion that it "might get better"? Yes, if it weren't for modern medicine I'd be dead from some stupid infection three times over by now.

So after much butting-in and insistence from my very nice and mothering coworkers (and that's the other thing: when I do seek medical attention it's usually the product of outside intervention) I went to the specialist to tell him my sad toe-tale. He injected my full of drugs (and due to a faulty needle I actually got some extra!) and on his way out I heard him tell the nurse that I had "the works." Truly, I am a bad-ass.

He removed the rogue sliver of toenail as well as the scar tissue (hamburger) that had formed. The whole thing took less than ten minutes. I didn't feel a thing. He cut off a chunk of my toe and I didn't feel a thing! He's sending the pus off to the lab and I'm going back next week for a follow-up.

Of course, as soon as the anaesthetic wore off I had to go home from work with a swollen throbbing foot. And this morning I had to soak the bandage off. That was pleasant. You know how sometimes in bad horror movies someone will get cut open and their blood will kind of spray out in regular spurts, as if in time with their heartbeat? Well, that actually happens.

Enough said.