This Is Kind Of Gruesome (complete with pictures)

Want to talk about some pain? Well I sure do!
Pull up a chair while I recount for you my "Night of Extreme Pain!!!!" (cue lightning and thunder effects)

FYI: This is kind of gross, so if you are eating (or just finished eating), you my want to skip this for now and come back later.

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Sunday night, Hotness and I were ate home. It was the last evening of a long Holiday and we were gearing up to go to work the next day. Outside it was snowing, but inside was nice and warm thanks to a good fire we had going.
I made some Mexican hot chocolate (or my version of it, anyway) which was simply hot cocoa with a shot of tequila and cinnamon schnapps in it. Mmmm... tasty!

Finally it was getting near bedtime and as we were turning off lights and getting ready to retire, I noticed that I needed to add some more water to the pan we have on the wood stove (for humidity).
I went into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle to get some water.
In the process of getting said bottle, I dislodged a cookie sheet from the stack of recently washed dishes which sent it cascading down towards the floor and onto my left big toe. Square on the toenail, no less.

*Ka-bang!!* went the cookie sheet and was soon followed by a litany of curse words which I will not repeat for you here.

"What happened? What's wrong?", asked Hotness before seeing me doubled-over in the kitchen. "One of the cookie sheets fell right onto my toe! It hurts!!!", I replied... ever so calmly.

Anyway, to make a long story shorter, I took some aspirin (I didn't have anything stronger in the house at the moment) and tried to sleep.

I must have gotten some sleep as Hotness said I was snoring at one point. But around 2:30 a.m. I woke up and my foot was throbbing. I tried to get comfortable, but it was no use.
I got out of bed, rather than continue to toss and turn and wake Hotness. I tried to sit on the couch, but that didn't help. So I went into my office to take my mind off the pain by playing video games, but that didn't help either.

I took some more aspirin and waited it our until I got ready for work.
Putting on my shoes just about killed me, it hurt so bad. Then I had to drive (thankfully I don't have a clutch) into work.

As soon as I got in I tried making an appointment with my doctor to get it looked at.
Luckily he had an early opening, so they scheduled me right in.

I put my shoe back on (OUCH!!!!) and drove back home to the doctor.

He got in the room, looked at my foot and said "Oooh... I'll bet that hurts, huh?" (Gotta love my doctor's sense of humor)
He said I had a "hema-whatsis" (which was just a fancy way of saying I had a build-up of blood under the toenail) and said that he could take care of it in the office.
He went and got a small, battery-operated cauterizer., and burned a tiny hole in the toenail.
Immediately the pressure and throbbing stopped and my foot felt much better. Of course, now the little room started to smell like burned hair (or rather burned toenail). Stinky-poo.

Then he kind of squished the blood out through the hole (I watched for a moment and then couldn't stand to look at it) and bandaged it up with a bunch of gauze.

I ended up having this humongous, bulbous toe when he was all finished with it.

The best thing out of all of this... he prescribed me some Vicodin.

I only needed to take it at night to kill the pain and help me sleep, and brother did I ever!

I slept like a baby. Or like the dead. (or like a dead baby... but that's kind of gross to think about)

Today I am feeling much better although wearing shoes still hurts as it pinches my toe. So at work I take it off and limp (or is it 'gimp') around until I'm done.

Now, here are some pictures (WARNING! These are not for the weak):

Here's my toe as it looked this morning. I had to take off the bandage and see how it was doing. Other than looking quite gross, it was doing fine. Still a little leaky, so I put a bandage back on it.


Here's where he burned a little hole to release the pressure from under the toenail.

I'll most likely lose my nail, but in the meantime I get to have this disgusting, icky one to look at.

This is the offending cookie sheet. It's an Airbake type, so it's dual-layered.

The edge of it hit my toe square on.

I did some math, thanks to the interweb and it's many resources for doing difficult mathematics.

The cookie sheet weighed 1 lb 4.3 oz. (For the purposes of my inquiry, I just calculated it at 1 lb.)

It fell a little more than 3 feet from the counter. (So I said 3.25 feet)

The result? It hit my foot with an impact of 10.9 lbs of force.

That may not seem like a lot of force, but it only takes 15 lbs of force to tear your ear off of your head, so I'm really lucky my toe didn't get broken.

Anyway, thanks for letting me share.

I hope I didn't make any of you lose your meal.