My thumb with a dissolving piece of pasta underneath the nail. Yes, that's right—I got a piece of pasta stuck under my fingernail last weekend. And how, you'll ask, did I do that? By washing dishes and using my thumbnail to try to scrape a piece of dried pasta off the bottom of a pot. As you can probably guess from the photo, it hurt something awful, and it only got worse as the days passed. This happened on Saturday (a week ago) so I went to the doctor on Monday. The doctor said I had to see a surgeon, which was not really good news for someone w/out insurance. I asked what would happen if I just left alone; wouldn't it just sort of work its way out, maybe pop the nail off or something? They couldn't say, but recommended against that course of action.

I saw the surgeon on Tuesday and he had the pasta out in about four minutes. The worst part was the anesthetic he shot into my thumb. He stuck the needle in and when he pushed the plunger on the syringe it felt like he'd placed my thumb on the sidewalk and smashed it with a sledgehammer. I don't remember feeling that kind of pain before. Ever. Then, w/no pause, he grabbed some sort of curved sharp implement and started scraping beneath my nail until he thought he'd removed all the foreign stuff. I felt each scrape and jab in a sharp yet distant way that made it difficult to breathe. Finally, he flushed the area w/water (or saline, maybe) by sticking a needle under the nail and squirting around. By that time, the thumb was pretty numb and I was pretty glad about that.

I don't know which hurt worse—having the pasta under the fingernail or having it removed. Ok, the removal definitely hurt worse, but for a much shorter time. By Wednesday it was feeling much better, and by now it's pretty well healed. Still, I recommend you a) wear gloves when washing dishes, and b) never use your fingernail as a food scraper. I'm sure you're smart enough you don't need to be told these things, but, well, I'm just saying.