Pardon me.

Contrary to what you may be thinking, I’m not flipping you off!

I burned three fingers on my right hand yesterday. And what you see above is my hand with burn cream on it. The stuff was supposed to sit in a thick layer on the burns for a good half hour. Which resulted in my weird (and kind of obscene) crab hand. If I wasn’t careful, I’d get the cream on everything, so I had to hold up my hand and fingers like that. Fun times.

Well, not really. I burned my fingers on a bowl from a microwave, out of all things. I heated up some food, the bowl got super heated and I picked it up without thinking. I couldn’t imagine a supposedly microwavable bowl would get that hot, but it did. It got SEARING hot, and it gave me the NASTIEST burns I’ve ever had (and I’ve been burned in the kitchen A LOT). They were so painful I had to focus all my energy into not going into shock. My brother’s girlfriend said that it probably hurt that much because fingers have a lot of nerve endings, because we use them to touch and feel surfaces, temperatures, etc.

I had to grip a bag of fake ice as we half-frantically dashed in the rain to the nearest pharmacy where I found this Burn Jel stuff. There was a whole bunch of other burn remedies on the shelf, but between you and me I picked this one out because it has a picture of a baking lady on it. Hee.

I didn’t get it on the burn immediately, so it took about an hour to really work. It has lidocaine in it and some aloe vera.  I had to use it for a long time before it finally worked—some cushy gauze helped. I had to wince my way through a stirfry and the simplest things, like turning the key in a lock or zipping up my jeans.

Today my fingers are doing better, but I had to wrap them for  a good part of the day because I kept hitting the sore parts. But the Burn Jel has really helped—as I write this I have no blisters and the pain is almost all gone.

I’m writing about this because I realized last night if I had damaged my fingers beyond repair, I wouldn’t be able to cook or craft. It’s my cautionary tale to you—PLEASE don’t be a klutz like me in the kitchen (well, anywhere for that matter)! Believe me—you need your fingers!