Inventions

 No pain pills for two whole days. Healing is taking place! My thumb healed first. I can bend it and wiggle and pull my britches up and down. That got me thinking ....

When I was a lowly student nurse in the early 70's, I encountered a doctor in the ER who liked to cut toes out on his patients with ingrown toenails. Wait, I misrepresented his technique; he literally yanked them out. He loved an audience and would happily invite the student nurses to watch. He would seek out the instructors to send us there. There were two classes going on and healthy supply of students to horrify.

The patient would be waiting in complete dread. I don't know if they had experience or just word of mouth from other patients having had this procedure. He would enter in a rush and grab the offending toe and wrap a rubberband as tight as possible around the base of the toe. His tray of sterile instruments would have already been set up. This is when the instruments were not disposable. They were gathered together and sent up to the surgery department to be washed and autoclaved. They came to us on a stainless-steel tray, the entire thing wrapped in sterile drapes, then wrapped in a drape that would keep it all sterile inside. The nurse would need to open the outer drape and then don sterile gloves to set up the tray to his specifications.

The nurse would then open up his gloves and help him glove up. Doctors were demi-gods back in the day. As soon as he was gloved, he would inject the solution of his choosing to numb the bad toe. He would inject it so fast, it would be running back out around the needle. Thank all that is holy this doctor did not choose to be a dentist!! Xylocaine needs to be injected slowly so that the solution can enter the tissue and numb the area before moving the needle to the next area. Only one needle jab for this guy! Then, before the numbness had even set in, he would grab the nail spreader and jam it up under the nail, all the way to the cuticle and open it up to loosen the nail from the tissue below. Then he would employ a sturdy pair of hemostats, clamp onto the nail and yank it off. All the while describing the torture session in ghoulish detail.

Are you cringing? After graduation, my employment began in the ER. This doctor seemed to choose me to "help" him every time I was on duty. Maybe he liked me, or maybe he sensed my distaste of his solution to an ingrown toenail. Who knows. I would find a focal point just beyond the toe and avoid watching. All this to say that he did impart some useful wisdom my way. He liked to talk, as I said and one day he asked if I knew how to avoid ingrown toenails. Shaking my head in the negative and thinking that I would avoid HIM should I have an ingrown toenail.

He preventative measure sounded weird, but the more I thought about it the more sense it made. He said to cut a "V" in the middle of your toenail, and the nail would grow towards that "V" to try to fill it in. I related this "story" to my son-in-law when we were on a trip. My grandson had headphones on, and his mother followed his example, saying she had heard the story before when she had a habit of cutting her toenails too short. 

So, Chad and chatted about inventing a toenail clipper with a divot in the center. We decided that instead of a "V", it should be a little rounded to prevent the sharp edge from getting caught when you put socks on. Having used this technique on my own toes I agreed that I always had to file the edges.

We never did invent our idea. I think it would have sold quite well. Especially if I had a video of that doctor's procedure! But I digress, quite a bit. Now I think I should invent a devise to help patients who might find themselves without the use of both hands. Sort of like a shoehorn. Sounds good, but if you are trying to pull your bitches up, the good hand is already employed on the other side. It would need to be powered by the good hand and would have to go around the front or the back and grab the waistband and be in sync with the movement with the good hand. 

I am stuck there. I suppose you could just ask your mate or caretaker for help. Or just hang out in your nightgown all day, eliminating the need to pull your panties up and down by not wearing them. And once again I remind you that my neighbors cannot see me.

Maybe I was an inventor in a previous life.