My Middle Finger...

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

...is Wounded

"It's swollen."

"Is it infected?"

"No, your finger has been through a trauma."

A trauma named Toonces!

Inexperienced cat parents that we are, we did not wear gloves to put Toonces in the cat-carrier for her trip to the vet to have her nails clipped and teeth cleaned.

My left hand is the one I use routinely and its middle-finger is sheathed in a thick, white, cotton tube through tomorrow. When it first happened, I looked at the inside of the finger, from finger-tip to palm, and had to sit down, so I wouldn't faint.

And she punctured my right hand on the meaty part, outside with a tooth, leaving a big, brown, bruise around the bite.

"No typing for two days. Do you need a note for work?"

"That's not going to happen," I answered.

The doctor shook her head and walked away. Turns out, the pain forced me to type minimally the first day and still, not as much as usual yesterday either...what a great disclaimer for not having blogged more frequently lately.

After my first visit to the doctor, in the CVS parking lot, where I went to pick up my Augmentin antibiotic prescription, I burst into tears. An animal had never before attacked me, let alone a pet. First, I cried from shock and then from shame. You baby! So many women your age have been through the pain of child-birth. What's with you? Enough!

Scolding myself didn't curtail the tears. I wanted to call my mom for comfort because Pat was at her Master Gardener training and I didn't want to bug her, but I couldn't call my mother because I didn't want to scare her. So I sat behind the wheel, feeling like an infantile adult/grown-up baby and cried really hard for a few minutes, till I felt some relief.

And then an ultimately comforting series of thoughts entered my head: Pull yourself together. The sooner you get the prescription, the sooner you can go home. Probably, Toonces' sister Phoebe is crying by herself at home, wondering where everyone -- especially Toonces -- went, and you can comfort each other.

Phoebe was waiting by the door when I arrived. I got cat-hair all over my bandages.