Seriously Ouch!

[Chicken Manny]

After hearing Klink's great ski story I thought it was an interesting idea to share a funny, if not disturbing story.

When I was in college I worked for a carpenter. The perfect job for a college guy just out of the military: no stress and immense satisfaction. I’m always in awe when I realize that I can actually do something new.

This particular week is New Construction. We start with a hole in the ground and in a few months we have a house. The proud homeowners framed in their new front door, all four waving as we carpenters drive off into the sunset… another job well done, Kemo Sabe. Not really, but they generally seem happy when we leave.

New Construction is back-breaking labor, and involves a lot of heavy lifting and awkward materials. This morning I dropped a sixteen foot, two-by-twelve, pressure-treated board on my ring finger. You can imagine the dimensions of such a piece of lumber, and take my word for it: pressure-treated (the green boards that don’t rot) are much heavier than the regular old boards. In the simplest terms, it is a very heavy board. Really. Very heavy. Imagine this long, unwieldy, ponderous piece of wood. Now imagine your finger resting – lazy and unaware – on the corner of a concrete foundation. Add a bit of clumsiness, a dash of gravity, and you’ve got a recipe for comedy!

The worst part is that it doesn’t hurt right away. I watch my fingernail meld from a healthy pink into a radiant magenta, and the pain hasn’t hit yet, twenty seconds… 40 seconds… a minute and a half… I’m nervous in anticipation of the real pain… there’s a dull ache, and the color is changing into an interesting shade of purple… my fingernail is obviously adjusting to its new state of being, and is just gathering breath into its lungs before really letting loose with a horrific scream of pain.

The pain finally comes, and it’s about as bad as I expected. But right now it’s a curiosity, and I show it to my boss with a “see how stupid I am” laugh. He says, “Oh, man, you better relieve some of that pressure, or it’s really going to start to hurt.” Start to hurt? uh oh. I look down and see that the fascinating color scheme beneath my nail has settled at bloated-corpse purple (the kind of purple-slash-black that Cure fans wish they could find in a lipstick shade). The blood has pooled from my cuticle and spread right to the edge of the nail. The pressure starts to build, and I can see the end of my nail wanting to separate from the skin beneath it.

Still, the pain’s not that bad. I assume that the bleeding has stopped, and since no more blood is gathering beneath my nail, the pain should hold steady and maybe even abate.

No.

By noon it feels like the tip of my finger is trying to give birth to a tiny stegosaurus, sans egg. I’m sweating from the pain. I shuffle my feet as if I need to urinate. I’m having trouble following simple directions, ignoring my employer while I wander aimlessly around the job site. I’ve been grinding my teeth for an indeterminate amount of time; I force myself to relax my jaw and five minutes later I realize that not only am I doing it again, I never stopped. My finger is bloated now, a crimson balloon filled with pain, which is made up of serrated granules of pain, wrapped in pain and then beaten with a mallet of pain. I expect my fingernail to pop up like the hood of a car. The pain is radiating down my finger and infecting the other fingers. If something brushes against my index finger I have to stifle a scream. My chest is starting to ache now, and I start to wonder if maybe a blood clot worked its way loose from my finger nail and made its way into a heart valve. It makes perfect sense to expect a heart attack. I realize that I’m cradling my hand to my chest and whimpering.

Finally I beg a coworker for an aspirin. “[censored], dude, you need to open that Fk'er up. Let it drain. I heard that if you heat up a nail it’ll burn a little hole in your fingernail. Seriously, here’s a lighter.” My face lights up at this news. At last, someone who knows what he’s talking about!

This is a miserable failure. Not only am I not getting the nail hot enough (each time it approaches the prescribed “red-hot,” it gets too hot to hold), it’s becoming very clear that I’m a complete pussy. I just can’t summon the determination I need to drive that nail into what is probably the second most sensitive square of flesh on my body, made worse by the throbbing injury. You might as well ask me drive a shish-ka-bob skewer through my testicle.

“Well,” says my glib coworker, “why don’t you try drilling it.”

“You’re out of your Fking mind.”

“No, I did it to my big toe. It’s easy.”

“The Fk. I am NOT drilling my finger.”

“Want me to do it?”

“If you come near my with that, you and I are going toe to toe.”

At this point the pain is clawing its way up my spinal cord and beginning to affect autonomic functions. My knees are starting to buckle and I’ve lost any capacity for rational thought.

This is the point where I turn a corner in my paradigm of personal hygiene. Not only do I want this torment to stop, need this torment to stop; I have ceased to care how it stops. I go for the drill.

Sweat is pouring down my face now, blurring my vision. My hand is splayed on a sawhorse, I’m blinking furiously, and my other hand begins to shake from the pain radiating from my infected finger, which I’m sure is going to burst at the fingertip, spawning a demon of blackest agony in a spray of blood and viscera. I give the trigger a tentative jerk and the drill bit spins across the smooth nail. I have to push on the drill to keep the bit from slipping down the curve of my nail, and this slight pressure is like a vice on my finger. I whir the drill to life. Nail shavings are starting to peel out of the hole. I start to get a little squeamish. The shavings are pink, then vermillion with blood. I have this insane desire to look away while I do this.

In the vast scheme of things, one-eighth of an inch is very small. When discussing astrophysics, it’s microscopic. In carpentry, it’s negligible. When drilling into one’s own fingernail, one-eighth of an inch is huge. Cavernous. It might just as well be a railroad spike. The problem with drill bits (at least, it seems problematic when performing some self-surgery at a construction site) is that the tip is beveled to a point. So, as one drills into one’s fingernail, the point of the bit is the first to break through. Not enough to open the hole wide enough to let the pressure really flow out, but just enough to bite the flesh underneath the reservoir of blood. The drill creates a cone in my nail which fills with blood as I press down and makes it even harder to see what I’m doing.

This goes on for five minutes before I have to admit to myself that I’m not pushing down on the drill hard enough. At last, the motivation to really mutilate myself in order to stop this pain has crested… and I press….

A drill bit is essentially a simple machine. Based on the screw, it’s a sharp edge of metal which winds up a shaft of varying sizes. For the most part, drill bits do the work for you. Like a screw, it pushes itself through the material without too much pressure. When you drill a piece of wood and break through to the other side, the drill will stop gripping the wood and push in and out easily. However, when drilling through a non-porous material, the twist in the drill will catch the material and drive itself through the hole. This is true for plastics, and sheet metal, and – as it turns out – the human fingernail. In my head, the procedure goes something like this: rzzzz…. rzzzz…. rzzzz….rz…. rzzzzz…. rzzzzzzzzz…. rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*tick* SLOOOOOORP.

There is a horrifying nanosecond when I realize that I have actually drilled my fingernail through, and that the drill has instinctively burrowed into my flesh. In a panic, I release the trigger and yank the drill, which causes considerably more pain than if I had reversed the bit and eased it out… but the blood is finally pouring out of the hole in my nail. I want to dance with joy. I feel like I just struck oil in the middle of the Great Depression. Each rivulet of blood is like a sip of ice tea on a summer afternoon. I think about all those poor clods out there who can’t stomach drilling a hole in their finger and begin a blissfully pain-free life, and it occurs to me that drilling a hole in my fingernail may be the most rewarding experience of my life.

When I tell my helpful coworker that his suggestion worked, he draws a horrified expression on his face. “You actually drilled you’re Fking finger? You’re Fking nuts, dude.”

[KB]

Oh boy.............never knew how squeemish I was until I read this..........had me absolutely squirming in my chair.............methinks I need to go find a happy pain free story to recover.

Ken

[jimmytim]

The last best thing happened to me was when I dropped a huge long fat bamboo stick on my little toe. Lucky I had my boot on so it doesn't hurt as much as you did...

Still, thumbs up for drilling your finger!

[Antrax]

That story just reminded me my old man. He was a pediatrician and loved restore old cars so he always have accidents. When he smashed his thumb and started to fill with blood, he opened the nail with a syringe. He used the syringe like a drill bit and rotated it continuously until it got through. I think that a power drill could be too much of a pain.

Any way, your story sounds very painful man.

[Pugwash]

At this point the pain is clawing its way up my spinal cord and beginning to affect autonomic functions. My knees are starting to buckle and I’ve lost any capacity for rational thought.

I just love the fact it never crossed your mind to seek qualified medical attention.

[jonthebhoy]

CM - If you ever give up carpentry, think about novel writing. You have a certain flair.

JTB

[TJGladeRaider]

Your first information was nearly correct.

When dealing with pressure buildup beneath the nail, what you need is a paperclip. You heat the end red hot and it will burn thru the nail instantly and painlessly. Unlike a nail, the paperclip goes to red hot very fast - the end you hold doesn't get warm.

Bill

Former military medic

Former civilian paramedic

[Pugwash]

When dealing with pressure buildup beneath the nail, what you need is ...

... medical attention.

[slay]

This is a miserable failure. Not only am I not getting the nail hot enough (each time it approaches the prescribed “red-hot,” it gets too hot to hold), it’s becoming very clear that I’m a complete pussy. I just can’t summon the determination I need to drive that nail into what is probably the second most sensitive square of flesh on my body, made worse by the throbbing injury. You might as well ask me drive a shish-ka-bob skewer through my testicle.

tried that once when i had an infection in my thumb... didnt wanna go to the doctor, didnt really work. so i stuck a little watch screw driver underneath my nail, hurt like hell, but released the pressure! and also caused the infection to get worse lol

in the end i had to visit a doctor who cut my nail open. why didnt you go to the doctor in the first place? lol i thought i could do it myself, but lesson learned

[Ethan]

CHRIST.

[jonthebhoy]

CHRIST.

Yes he could have helped but it's been over two thousand years since his last visit and in any event this would have been small fish for him.......ask Lazarus. He's still around I'm sure (Maybe on RWG1).

JTB

[Pugwash]

Yes he could have helped but it's been over two thousand years since his last visit

Leprechauns are easier to catch.

[Ethan]

Yes he could have helped but it's been over two thousand years since his last visit and in any event this would have been small fish for him.......ask Lazarus. He's still around I'm sure (Maybe on RWG1).

JTB

Scots...

[jjajh]

@chicken manny

You definitely have a future in writng

You had me wincing, cringing and totally enmeshed in your story. Would love to hear the day after sequel.

One other thought....get medical insurance or the tutorial "Self Healing Techniques for Dummies"

[jonthebhoy]

Scots...

Descendants...

[Chicken Manny]

Don't worry guys, that job is ancient history. I was young and dumb and thought myself to be too tough to be bothered with any doctor and his crazy ideas.

Today the most risked injury I aspire to is a paper cut. Not as much blood and guts working in Silicon Valley. Well, if you don't count the whole dot bomb thing.

I'm happy you enjoyed the story. If nothing else I left that job with a story.

Cheers,

CM

[Ethan]

Descendants...

Okay, now THAT'S funny!

Good one, JTB!