View from the North 40: And now I'm almost a surgeon

I got to pull stitches out of my husband’s face Wednesday and I was so excited about it I did a happy dance while he wasn’t looking.

He never wants to let me play doctor on him.

I get it — and by that I mean I get it, and I don’t get it all at the same time.

John is, let’s say, sensitive. He lives with pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I get that. So a new pain, even — or maybe especially — little pains like from a sliver, cause a sort of excited nervous system response. That’s the part where he loses me because the logic in my brain says that the sliver should be nothing, but I’m not going to argue an unwinnable point. What do I know about the reality of living with 24/7 pain. Nothing.

Fortunately, what I know about living with someone who has pain 24/7 is fairly extensive. What that means is, even though I don’t get how the sliver can hurt so much, the important thing is that every bit of evidence I’ve seen for more than 30 years consistently tells me that the truth is that the little things hurt him more than the average person.

The sliver, the scratchy tag, the rough fabric, the hang nail, their pain is unquestionable. That is all I need to know.

My husband is sensitive. Unfortunately for him, his wife is ham-handed. It’s my nature, and I try but I am a barbarian.

I’m not saying I don’t feel pain. My trick back? I’m not nearly entertained by that shifty, slipping, nerve-pinching maneuver as it is. That time I got the end of my finger caught between a hammer and hard place and turned the fleshy part into the poster child for the phrase “grisly mess”? It took me five minutes before I stopped swearing and start, let’s say, policing up the wreckage.

But I get a sliver? I just root it out with any handy knife, as long as it can cut a decent hole in my flesh to gain access to the offending fragment of whatever. John will just look at me with a skeptical twist to his face and ask if I want him to fetch a shovel to help with the excavation. He’s got a real sense of humor, that guy.

Cheat grass seeds in my socks? One of them actually has to be scraping through the skin to get me to stop and pull those pokey nasties out of the sock.

Scratchy tag in a shirt that John would wear for 30 seconds then take off? I’ll have the shirt half worn out from wearing over and over again — annoyed each time by the scratchy tag — before I remember to cut the tag off prior to getting dressed.

Need to remove a hang nail? That’s just reason No. 27 for why I have front teeth, and a little tear in the skin never hurt anyone. Except my husband.

I can’t remember the last time I was asked to remove a sliver from one of his fingers.

It’s a really sorry commentary on how badly my sliver removal skills suck that a guy with only one arm prefers to let a sliver fester in his hand rather than let me help remove it. He is literally betting his on the life of his one and only hand that the shard of whatever will pop out of his skin before he gets some toxic infection rather than have me get it out as soon as possible.

I am allowed to apply bandages to wounds — under the strictest supervision. And, no kidding, he will get mirrors out to keep an eye on the procedure if it’s out of his line of sight.

Imagine my surprise then when he announced in a positive tone that the doctor had told him I could remove the stitches from his 2-inch long incision.

Really?

Yes. He really did not want to go to another doctor’s appointment.

I played it cool, trying not to scare him off, but I was clapping and jumping up and down on the inside. I planned the procedure for the whole week. Bought new scissors. Soaked everything in rubbing alcohol. Seriously thought about using whiskey so I could also give John a shot to fortify his courage like John Wayne would do.

I’ve never worked so hard to make my beefy peasant hands into fine instruments attuned to delicate work. I only made him cringe one little time, but no blood was drawn, and the incision didn’t, by some strange set of unlikely circumstances and mishap-miracles, unheal and fall open to the world.

I just had to snip the itty bitty knots at each end, loosen each loop and pull that running stitch free of the incision site. The suture material came out so slick and unmangled that it still held the coil shape it had when it was holding his face together.

Look, I said holding it up for him to see. It looks just like that curly cue hair that grows in your right ear!

I’m guessing from the look on his face that next time I get to help with a medical issue, I need to work on my ham-handed bedside manner.

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And, yes, after the medical procedure, his face does look five years younger on the right side at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .