The Burn

Sorry for the blog absence but the last time I wrote a post I was about 2 sentences away from publishing when I accidentally hit some magical combination of keys that actived an "abort all" mission, thus completely wiping out the post I had worked on for close to an hour.  I was very mad at blogger for allowing this to happen and its punishment was a boycott.  I have now moved on.

By telling you the following story (again) I run the risk of being filed away in your brain rolodex under the "really stupid people" file, but that's a risk I'm willing to take in order to keep it real here on my blog.

A few nights ago Jon got home very late from work, exhausted and hungry.  Being the good wife that I am, I told him to take a load off and I would cook his dinner (he eats 6 meals a day for his diet, hence the late meal.)  He showed me exactly how he wanted it cooked in some fancy pants way, and I obliged as he went to lay down and watch t.v.

Step one was to get a pan good and hot on the stove top with some olive oil and sear a piece of pork on each side.  Check.  Step two was to put said pan with pork in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.  Check.  Step three was to take the pan out of the oven, put it back on the stove top, set the pork aside to rest, and make a sauce with the pork drippings and several other ingredients, including white cooking wine.  I made it to the point of setting the pork aside with no problem, and started grabbing ingredients out of the pantry to make the sauce.  

I grabbed the bottle of cooking wine first, unscrewed the top and started to pour it directing into the pan sitting on the stove top.  I stopped myself just short of tipping the bottle all the way over, thinking, "duh, you shouldn't pour alcohol directly over a stove top."  SAFETY FIRST!  So, instead, I grabbed the handle of the pan with my bare hand and lifted it off the stove to pour the wine.  Ahem, let me say that again.  I COMPLETELY WRAPPED MY BARE HAND AROUND A 400 DEGREE HANDLE AND LIFTED IT OFF THE STOVE TOP BEFORE MY NERVE ENDINGS SENT THE MESSAGE TO MY BRAIN THAT IT WAS HOT AS A CAMPFIRE IN HADES AND I SHOULD PROBABLY LET GO ALREADY.  I immediately threw the pan back on the stove, but I knew it was too late.  It was bad.  It was really bad.

Normal person's thought:  Do not touch.  My thought:  I'm gonna get you, handle!

I ran to the sink and stuck my hand under cold running water and yelled for Jon to come give me sympathy, because really, there was nothing else he could do.  The tears were streaming at this point and blisters were forming all over my hand as I rotated from running water to dunking my hand in ice water to wrapping a cold washcloth around it.  But, I'm telling you, the pain was SO intense.  Oh, the pain.  I tried to tough it out with household remedies, but I gave in after an hour.  The pain just would not subside, and I needed the good stuff.  I needed prescription pain killers.

I apologize for the graphic nature of this picture. 

I drove myself to the ER around midnight, steering with my right hand and reaching over the wheel with my left hand soaking in a cup of ice water (Jon stayed home with Sam, who was sleeping.)  My intentions were to run in all dramatic-like and demand painkillers, but after careful re-consideration, I decided they might think I was one of those crazy people who injures themselves on purpose for a ticket on the Percocet train.

A gown for a hand wound seems a bit dramatic to me.

A very nice doctor gave me a prescription for painkillers.  Then a nurse gave me a tetanus shot (what the hell?) and proceeded to spread burn cream on my blisters (which was not for pain, only to prevent infections) and wrapped my hand up to resemble a half woman-half lobster creature.  So, you see, they took away my ice water and wrapped my scorched hand in a nice little gauze oven.  And then it felt like I was holding a pile of burning coals in my hand, which, I didn't think was possible, but was actually more painful than when I  first burned my hand on a sizzling pan.  I apologized to the lovely nurse, ripped the gauze off my hand as fast as I could and stuck it back in the cup of ice water.

Before I tore the gauze off like a crazy animal.

After a stop at the 24 hour pharmacy (where I was sure this crazy looking guy was going to mug me for my painkillers) I finally made it back home and into my bed.  Except, hahaha, there would be no sleep.  Even with the Percocet, I couldn't take my hand out of ice water for more than a few seconds without the pain being too much.  I tried sleeping with an ice water-filled sandwich bag rubber-banded around my wrist, but that wasn't so much conducive to sleep as you could imagine.  Let's just say, it was a long night.

The moral of this story is to never do anything nice for anyone ever.  That's the lesson I was supposed to learn from all this, right?