There’s A Toe In My Kitchen

“It’s just a flesh wound!” I’m sure I’ll hear this quote sooner or later…

All right, there is not actually a toe in my kitchen.  Or around my kitchen.  Or even in  my house.  But there could have been.  Sort of.  There were toes involved.  Got your attention, didn’t it?

Today was my job interview.  My Mom decided to come up and watch the kids so my husband didn’t have to leave work early.  The kids were thrilled, I was ecstatic-we don’t exactly get visitors or family up very often.

As I was getting ready to make lunch, I receive a text from my husband, asking if my mom was indeed coming.  I texted back and said yes.

“I’m headed to the hospital.  Dropped metal on my foot.  Probably stitches.”

Huh?  Oh, he’s pulling my leg.  He has to be joking.  Is he kidding?

I text back, “Seriously?”  I wait for him to text me saying something like it almost happened or it’s a serious exaggeration.

No.  Two minutes later he texts back, “Seriously.”

I SERIOUSLY start freaking out-OMG!  Visions of staggeringly huge medical bills, thinking that this is the straw to break the camel’s back…. then I remember that it happened at work.  Oh, worker’s comp?  Please?  Remember, I have an anxiety disorder and ADD-which means I have really random thoughts when I worry excessively.

The next text I receive:  “I’ll be fine, want pictures?”

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!  Ew!”  I’m a bit squeamish.  This is ironic, considering I taught first aid classes as my job.  Ask me sometime what the rules of thumb for needing stitches are.

“They said they can take video if that is better,” was his reply.

“No!  Brat!”

A few minutes later:  “I got pictures, for the kids.”  That’s ok, because I certainly won’t be looking at them.

So later on, I’m getting ready for my interview and realize that I haven’t heard anything for quite awhile.  So I texted him to ask what was going on.  “Do you get to come home early?  Did they have to cut your boot off? Did you get a sucker?”

My phone rings, it’s my husband. “Hi!  Just wanted you to know that I’m on my way home.  They had to amputate my toe because there was too much nerve damage.”

“WHAAAAT?  Which toe?” I shriek into the phone.

“The little one.  On my right foot.”

At this point I am just stunned.  Finally he lets me off the hook.  “NO they didn’t amputate.  But I DID get stitches.”

As it turns out, he was minding his own business and was attacked by a piece of metal that lunged at him and went through his boot, just above the steel toe.  He’s ok and they took very good care of him.  Eight stitches later, they sent him home.  Apparently his pain tolerance is quite amazing.  Who’d have thought that engineering was dangerous business?

The whole time this was going on, my panicked mind flashed to the episode of Friends in which a teenage Monica tries to seduce Chandler.  She accidentally severs one of his toes when she drops a knife and it goes right through his shoe.  Thinking quickly, she brings what she thinks is the toe to the emergency room so they can reattach it.  As it turns out, she didn’t grab the toe, she grabbed a very small piece of  carrot.

Her mother looks almost ill, “Oh my God!  There’s a toe in my kitchen.”

And there it goes…the knife that cuts off Chandler’s toe.

I DID get to go to my interview.  That’s stuff for another day.