Well I was all ready to blog about my laundry and then THIS happened.

So I was making myself turkey and gravy and stuffing for dinner, one of those microwaveable things that cost like $1.99.  I zapped it and then I was pulling off the plastic top when it suddenly snapped and sent BOILING gravy all over my right hand and wrist.  Now, I had known it was hot, but I sure hadn’t realized it was THAT hot.  I literally fell to my knees and started wiping my arm against the carpet because there wasn’t a rag near me, and then I managed to grab a shirt and use that.  Some of my skin came off with it.

I had this moment of panic because it was hurting so badly that I couldn’t decide whether I needed to go to the hospital or not.  Futhermore, I don’t know where the nearest hospital is, and I didn’t have the money for a cab so I would have had to take the subway or walk.  And of course I didn’t have any sort of burn treatment in my apartment. 

So I throw on a sweatshirt and shoes and literally sprint two blocks to the 24-hour Walgreens.  I madly search the aisles, sobbing and hyperventilating because I was in too much pain to think.  I grabbed the first burn treatment cream I could find.  Everyone was staring at me and like edging away.  Thanks for the compassion, guys.

Then, the man not ringing me up, but another of the employees, this middle-aged foreign man, looked me up and down and demanded, “What are you doing out in the cold dressed like that?”  I was wearing sneakers, cheer shorts, and a sweatshirt in 22degree weather.

Um . . . can you SEE that I am crying and can’t breathe and am holding my bright red hand out to the side because it is clearly in pain?  I’m not sure if he was trying to be funny or lighten the mood or what.  As soon as I paid, I stepped to the side and poured the stuff on my hand and it helped a little, and then I went walking back to my apartment.  Unfortunately, the medication only helped very little after the first five minutes, and I spent the next three hours soaking my right wrist, pinky, thumb, and palm in ice water.  Took a Tylenol PM to go to sleep around 1am, but my hand was hurting so badly that I woke up an hour later and had to go back to soaking it and blowing the fan on it.  Took ANOTHER Tylenol PM and fianlly managed to pass out, but I still had to sleep with my hand submerged in water.  It stopped hurting sometime during the night, and two of the blisters disappeared.

Unfortunately, this one grew.  And what you can’t really see in the picture is that even around the blister, there’s a raw red patch about the size of two quarters.  Ugh.  And it hurts like CRAZY if anything touches it.  Of course this happens the day I’m going to have to travel.  BLAH!