funny story

so you're going to forgive any typos i make during the course of this story, because i only have my left hand to tell it with. last night i was sort of dozing in bed with a votive candle burning, this is not smart. of course, i didn't realize i was dozing off until i had, and when i woke up my bedside table was mostly on fire. my immediate and muddled reaction? try to put it out. with my hand, mostly because i didn't know how big it had gotten. i only hit it once, because... result: pain. next action is to inform the house. so i start yelling about fire. mom runs in and tells me to get the dog--i do, and run downstairs where my sister is half awake and all i'll say to her is 'get out of the house.' then i yell to see if i need to call 911, mom says no, so my hand goes under water immediately. parts of it are black and don't wash off with the water. this worries me, but i'm too busy hearing my mom beat the shit out of the fire alarm which won't stop ringing. after a while she comes down and puts her hand in water too--she was smarter/more awake and beat it out with a book. we look up first aid--p.s., it's a quarter to three in the morning--and finish with water. then wrap hands in washcloths and drive to the ER. i am filled with guilt and keep apologizing. feel truly stupid for dozing with a lit candle. she says it was an accident, and i got hurt the worst anyway so that's an atonement in itself. i am not so sure.

we get to the ER and everything is handled promptly. i am in extreme pain, but am laughing about it to keep it at bay. the nurse is fabulous, by the time we're done soaking the burns in cold saline solution, cleaning the burned/blistering areas (the nurse compliments me on my apparently awesome pain threshhold, as she graduates from dabbing to near scrubbing with gauze), putting salve and bandaging my hand, i am pretty sure i'm going to be a nurse practitioner. oh and now i'm on vicodin, but it really does nothing but make some small part of my mind feel floaty. they give us a bunch of bandages and gauze and salve, and we wave bye at 3:45. fastest ER trip ever. then home, then i try to sleep while having delerium dreams of the curtains catching ablaze. mom says how lucky we were that neither of us are more hurt, and that the curtains didn't catch and the fire wasn't bigger. i am glad, but i still can't move my right hand.

today we changed the bandages. my blisters are significantly larger than small elephants. i am in pain. i am good humored about it. so is mom. that's my story of yesterday. beat that.

p.s. right after we get back the dog pulls off my mom's thumb bandage. i am so cross with that dog. it ate name of the rose too when i was reading it. omg. some day dog. wham, bam, straight to the moon.