An Appointment with the Mad Scientist, uh, Doctor

Yesterday I went to the doc with my toe. My hubby insisted. In fact, he's the one who picked up the phone and made the appointment. And he took charge of the dayhome kids while I was gone. Now you gotta know he means business when he does that.

So with much trepidation, I went. The doc was running a little late so in the time I was sitting there I did a pretty good job of working myself into a stomach churning lump of wimpiness. I was terrified and the thought of him touching my toe or, heaven forbid, him drilling my nail was making my stomach go on a crazy roller coaster ride. I'd never had that done before and I had visions of the kind of cordless electric drill in my husbands garage being applied to my sore toe. And sure enough what does he strongly recommend we do, drilling the nail to relieve the pressure.

He had bought a 1st year medical student in with him, a really nice, sweet young man, who, probably, after having me in the office is rethinking his choice of professions. I was so scared by that point, that while the doc went out of the room to hunt down the tools, a couple little tears slipped out. I know, t.o.t.a.l. wimp. And when I'm scared of stuff like that I get totally idiotic jokey. So here's this poor young man, trying to give me words of comfort while he's got a lunatic laughing/crying woman on his hands. And the doc is not in the room. And the doc is taking forever to come back. At one point, he leaned his head out the door to look in the hall and said "I wonder where he went?" . The guy was probably looking to see how far the nearest exit sign was.

Then the doc, who finally found his way back, says first they're going to try to burn a hole in the nail because sometimes that works better. The word "sometimes" totally jumped right out at me. Picture this in your head. He's sitting there trying to get the flame going big enough on a little oil lamp and heat up a metal wire. And I'm laying on the table thinking, "You better not be trying some weird experiment just because you want to show off to some fledgling student". And I've got visions of a mad scientist running through my head, but he doesn't want to do experiments on my brain, no it's my toe he's experimenting on. (Told you I get idiotic silly when I'm scared of something). So this running movie in my head is making me laugh nervously and say crazy joking things weakly trying to attempt to relieve my fear. Well, after a couple minutes, he can't get the flame going on the crazy thing good enough to heat up the metal, so we're back to drilling. The whole time the nice young man is keeping up a running conversation with me trying to get my mind off what's happening. I tell you, it was total sitcom material.

Before I knew it, it was done, and you know what? It didn't hurt at all. Not. one. smidge. of. pain. Now that's a good doctor! And I'm a total wimp. Oh, and in case you were wondering, it was not an electric drill the caliber of which equals the one in my hubby's garage. It was a tiny little thing he just moved back and forth between his fingers. As they were leaving the office with me still doing the nervous/lunaticy laugh, my doc looks at me and says "Thanks for being so entertaining!" Ya you're welcome, any 'ole time.

So what did I learn from this whole thing? There is a ton of blog mileage in a smashed toe! So if you ever have writer's block....feel free to borrow the smashed toe idea!