If you consider it casually, a toothpick is an innocent, slender, hard piece of pointy wood. Dropped carelessly and stuck in the carpet however (the offending party shall remain anonymous at this point), it becomes a quiet, lurking menace, capable of inflicting great pain and extended suffering.

I should know. I stepped on one Wednesday night.

It penetrated my right heel, broke off, and deeply lodged the remaining piece in the flesh of my foot. Who knew your heel had so many nerve endings? You run around on it all day, squeeze it into shoes, bang it against stuff - and never does it even flinch. But when invaded by a pointy foreign object, the heel comes *alive*.

It was *alive* all night - so I decided to go to Urgent Care on Thursday morning. After the initial chuckle (a *toothpick*? really?), the doc decided to prick me with numbing stuff (oh, the pain!), and then proceeded to cut open my foot. After rooting around in it for a while, he finally discovered the offending pick and extracted it. Two stitches and a tetanus shot later, I exited the UC, armed with a prescription for Codeine and antibiotics. At least I had that. Halleluja.

But wouldn't you know it? Either one of them didn't agree with me. After circling the airport on the Codeine for a fun while, it all turned horribly wrong and I found myself curled up on the bathroom floor with intense stomach pain, feeding my dinner to the fishies. After that abated, I tried to fend off the itchy palm syndrome for the rest of the night.

I feel better today - but I'll be damned if I touch those pills again. Needless to say also, all toothpicks have been banned from my house, and the party responsible for the carelessness has been severely reprimanded.

On the Bright Side - I'm getting a tax refund from the Fed and the State.

Is this the Universe's idea of a joke?

You were at Urgent Care and you didn't come to VISIT!!??!! Unless you were at the Westside Urgent Care.

We were heading home from playing at the river all day and I happened to look in the back seat where the dogs were and saw blood. Max, our rottweiler, had a huge rusty nail sticking straight out of his paw. He didn't even seem to notice. I about fainted trying to pull it out. He never flinched.

Power of the Dog.

Yeah - animals are hardy creatures. But then so are we humans.

I honestly think the tetanus and the antibiotics were overkill - for a little incision in the foot? Come on. And as it turned out, this stuff made me sicker than I would have been without.

Of course - what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger ...

Dental floss is good at removing the food stuck between those teeth and it hurts a lot less when stepped on.

Heh. Thank you for that enlightenment, Monkeyboy. *I* know that. That other party, alas, has to yet to see the light ...

Shannon: If you had your foot getting torn to pieces while you were doped up on pain meds, would your first inclination be to say "Hey, who do I know here that I can go visit?"

That's what I thought.

Get better soon, Simone.