The Saga of the Dreaded Black Locust Thorn

While I was out two days ago, putting up the dog wire in the backyard, I was accosted by the obnoxious trash tree known as the Black Locust. Upon returning to the house, I realized that the monster had left a stiff black thorn deep in my index finger's first knuckle. No amount of needle-probing, tweezer-pinching, squeezing, scraping or other first aid measures could get to it.

Now throbbing and swelling, I dumped a bunch of hydrogen peroxide and triple antibiotic ointment on it. Then I remembered that Cousin Jean had given me a jar of homemade salve when we were talking about insidious blackberry thorns. She said it was made out of olive oil, garlic, ground up plantain leaves and other bizarre things, but that it had the effect of drawing out thorns. I swabbed it on my finger, put a band-aid on it and went to bed.

The next morning, the swelling had reduced and it wasn't as painful, but I still couldn't get the darn thing out--it was just too deep. I finally was reduced to making an appointment with the doctor for 8:30 this morning to cut my knuckle open if need be, and get it OUT!

Oh, the embarrassment of it all. THIS is what makes health care so expensive, I mused--some fool taking up a highly-trained professional physician to get a stupid thorn taken out, when he could be curing cancer or diabetes or something useful!

Getting ready to go in, I decided to unwrap the finger and try once more to remove it myself (without fainting). Cousin Jean's salve really works, because I pushed on the skin around the hole and it slowly emerged and popped out! It was a vicious looking thing, all hooked and stiff, but it was finally out of my finger.

This is the problem with living alone. You have only yourself to blame and can only count on yourself when there's a problem. You have to eat slowly and take little bites because there's no one around to give you the Heimlich Manuever if you choke. You have to watch what you're doing in the woods, because there's no one to wonder why you didn't come home in an hour and set off to find you with your broken leg sprawled across the trail.

Bill could have grabbed my hand and dug it out even if I had fainted. He wouldn't want to, (but he probably would, just to save the cost of a doctor's visit), but he's not here. It's stupid, embarrassing things like this that make me realize that life is just plain harder when you're on your own.

And Cousin Jean ought to patent that salve right away!

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Speaking of stupid stuff, I saw an ad for signing up for a giant dodgeball tournament in New York City. 1000 people, 600 balls (presumably, you're out if you're hit, right?), until the last man or woman standing. Really. I can't make this stuff up.