My toe to a smashed potato

 This is about my ordeal of how my toe turned into a smashed potato!

This blog is not for the light-hearted people and evidently I myself am one among those, so go ahead and read it anyway.

For those of you who know me, I have a very vivid imagination so by means of this blog I will paint you a picture of how this exactly took place and then you can decide how funny my pain is to you.

On a heavy-traffic-Wednesday morning, I was standing in the bus stop where the traffic had come to a stand still. I saw a bus trying to maneuver through two barricades that were tied together, and told my sister-in-law that we should move away from the curb to avoid getting our faces smashed when the bus driver succeeds to literally drive in between the two barricades, which he eventually did (Yeah I have a final-destination-level-imaginative brain). 

Before any of you think, "Hey this is a blessing in disguise! At least you didn't get your face smashed!", I object to that superstitious logic right here.

Just as we tried to escape the bus driver's stupid move, a bike behind the bus also apparently tried the same. Suddenly, I heard my sister-in-law shouting at someone. I was wondering who was at the receiving end and saw this guy apologizing to her. That's when I actually listened to what she was saying, about being responsible with the machine that he had dropped. I look down, and voila, that heavy machine which she was talking about was on my foot! 

If I thought that was the most surreal moment of my life, I had one coming. It took a few seconds for the pain to reach my brains and by then the trauma had set in, my legs started shaking. I removed my shoes to see that my toe was smashed and opened up like a boiled potato! The trauma of seeing the toe smashed and split in the middle like a boiled potato is going to haunt me forever but I will be kind enough to spare you the gore details of that. A kind-hearted person (which is a rare species in Bengaluru) took me to the hospital. 

While I was pleading the ER doctors and nurses not to give me a shot (because I am shit scared of shots), someone was called in to remove my toe ring which had found a happy place embedded inside my toe, literally inside. Pleading him to spare me the pain of removing the toe ring didn't melt his heart as he was not willing to cut it. I told him I had no sentiments towards it and he could go right ahead to cut it but I guess he was a very sentimental, traditional and probably recently married Indian. He definitely thought I could bear the pain (Boy, was he so wrong!) while he managed to remove the toe ring with his bare hands from my fractured and smashed toe. This was probably the time I screamed the most in my entire life, but I will leave that to my gynec who handled my delivery, to judge.

Speaking of which, the ER doctors managed to call the lead surgeon and while we were waiting for her, they tried convincing me for a tetanus shot, a bandage around the toes for the time being, some cleaning of the wound but I didn't budge. I have gone my entire life till my mid-... Well I am not disclosing my age here so I am going to say, I have gone decades trying to avoid (physical) pain and I must say I am very skilled at it. Until that moment, I mean. So it was amusing to all of them because they got to know I had normal delivery and I bore that pain but I was screaming here. I simply told them to go have a look at the machine that fell on me (I guess they eventually did because I'd like to think they were a little more patient with me after that). Anyway, not just the doctors/nurses but even my friends/relatives seemed to think a woman who has gone through normal delivery can handle any pain. Just FYI y'all, we make up our mind and are prepared for child birth and the pain associated with it whereas I don't think anyone is prepared mentally or physically to take a heavy construction machine on their freaking foot! Yes, normal delivery is the utmost pain any human being endures but I don't understand the logic of why I should shut up if something else hurt me after that. I mean, that was then, this is now! And "now" is paining to hell!

And since this was my very first injury ever (not even a scratch, trip or fall up until that point in life), it was really difficult for me to even think of coping. I have been avoiding everything that could cause me the slightest pain i.e. sports, outdoor activities, cooking (just throwing it in here for the sake of it 😛), etc. And no, dancing and travel are not included in this because.... no reason.. they are not in this list, that's all! I was behaving like a kid throwing tantrum in the middle of the candy aisle, except I didn't want the candy.

Anyway I was obviously not obliged to no-shots because duh, I sustained a fracture and my toe looked like this.

Random image of smashed potato which bore a striking resemblance to my toe

Haha gotcha! Don't worry I won't share the actual photo. Not that the doctors didn't take any, oh they did! There was a 'before' picture from all angles, and then the 'after' picture by the lead surgeon! In fact after giving me the most painful shot of my life, injecting directly in the depth of my nerves, the surgeon gave me so many stitches in that small area of my toe. She even threw in extra stitches to attempt to save my nail! Nail? I mean seriously? come on! I told her she could take it out or even the toe, as long as I was under, I didn't care for those. No one uses the nail or even the toe right? But she said she had ethics and she couldn't do that as the chances of the arteries (which got smashed and cut by the way), healing was higher for my young age. She promised that my toe would look as beautiful as ever after she was done with it and if didn't heal, she could just remove it as it would be dead. Again, toe? beautiful? who cares?! I wanted to scream "I don't want to be in pain!" I was obviously not thinking of ethics or my toes or the nail polish which my daughter had painted on. I was thinking of the future when the ethical surgeon would mercilessly remove my stitches/my nail without putting me under. So I didn't want the stitches! She was also at her wit's end with me so she was joking about taking leave on the day I would come to get my stitches removed. And just like a kid who would pray that her teacher would take leave, I prayed for the surgeon to be on leave on my stitch removal day. But I tell you, there is no God!

Anyway she was very proud of her work and asked me to take out my mobile to take a picture. I wasn't allowed to bring my husband inside the OT but a phone was okay I guess? An ER doctor who I had requested to join me through my pain-drama to hold my hands, took out her mobile to take the picture of my sewn up toe. She said, "it's alright now, you can see" and all I managed to say was, "Don't show it to me ever or I will scream again". Guess she really got me because she went outside and showed the picture to my husband. 

From this

To this 😢

The first few nights (and days too) went completely in me screaming in pain and those damn painkillers did not help one bit. When I went for dressing, the other ER doctor tried a lot to cause me less pain. He was trying to chat with me, asking me what I did in my free time etc. I straight-up asked him, "how much is it going to hurt, because you are asking me questions to distract me?" He laughed and said, "no, we also need some entertainment so I am asking you all this. Do you sing?". I told him, "If I sing, you will have to take painkillers." And honestly, I don't want to cause anyone any pain😛 Finally he gave up as the gauze and bandage was stuck to my toe from the dried up blood so he had to give me local anesthesia again. Straight to my nerves, in between my toes, again! "I screamed on top of my lungs" would be an understatement.

The day which I considered apocalypse had arrived! And no, as you guessed, the surgeon was not on leave. She arrived at the hospital and tears started rolling down my cheeks. Me! I don't even cry! I hardly cry! I am going to refer to this as "not crying" and as "involuntary reflex reaction" to the impending doom that I foresaw in front of my eyes. But I should give her this, she really tried her best to put up with me, for like a minute. I pleaded, or rather begged, to give me general anesthesia. I know what you all stone-hearted people are thinking, it's not that big of a deal. Correct, it's not a big deal to have 15 stitches in a fractured toe plucked one by one and for someone who underwent labour pain, this must be cake walk. No! This pain would have been a 5/10 but why should anyone go through a 5/10 pain when there is an option to mitigate it? I would have preferred the risks of going into coma or becoming a vegetable from GA, than to go through the pain of getting the stitches removed. Why should we get well soon in pain when we can take our time to get well "not soon" and "not in pain"? Anyway, obviously I am here writing this blog so they didn't give me GA even after scraping the wounds to clean on the fractured toe (would like to emphasize this point again for you to envision the pain I went through). The whole hospital staff stood around my bed, trying to console me, trying to get me to go through the pain just for few minutes. Well, they all got the gift of seeing an adult woman crying in pain! The nice ER doctor said he would patiently take over to handle my panic attacks and my fear of pain, still injected the needles again in the same nerves and... the rest is history. Stitches removed, hoping to regain full function of my toes and hoping that the arteries and blood flow restores so that the doctors don't have to face me again to remove my toe!

After going through all these, I realized few things:

1. Normal delivery is the most painful indeed but like I said, that was then and this is now!

2. I do not have zero-tolerance to pain, I am scared of physical pain and would do anything to avoid pain just like any other living being on earth would do, hence proved that I am not a humanoid, which was a long standing suspicion I always had.

3. I still have fear of needles but would rather take anesthesia than... Nope! still shit scared of needles and would rather die before taking a shot or having to go through pain instead of taking the shot!

4. Will punch the next person who says women are superwomen because we go through pain during child birth and should tolerate any pain in life. No, we don't want to be superwoman! We want to be non-superwoman who scream when we are in pain.

5. When you tell any doctor it hurts somewhere, they go "where, here?", and definitely bend, press, scratch,poke and do everything to confirm that you are not lying. I mean, you trust them and go all the way to complain about your pain only for them to cause you more pain while confirming!

If you squirmed and cringed while reading through the parts of the blog that made you imagine pain, you are like me, so be very careful and precautious always. All the best, to me!