Dogbert’s Whip

This little piggy went to the market

This little piggy went home

This little piggy had roast beef

This little piggy had none

This little piggy cried “wee, wee, wee” all the way home

– Per Google.com, this popular “Mother Goose” nursery rhyme was first published in 1728, but frankly, I really don’t care.

For days, I’ve been contemplating on conducting surgery on myself. But when the opportunity came, I failed due to my apparent cowardice. See, I’ve had this nagging pain on my right foot’s “little piggy who went to the market.” For those of you who were lucky enough not to waste their toddler years trying to memorize nursery rhymes, that part of my anatomy is also known as my big toe. Somehow, the nail on that digit has retaliated from weeks of not being trimmed nor cleaned, and has decided to nosedive on my calloused and possibly fungi-infected flesh.

This agonizing realization came to me one morning when I woke up and jerked my right foot. Naturally, the toe bumped into the bed’s wooden board, and the nerve endings zapped pain impulses into my brain faster than I could muster to say “Ouch!” As I cursed incentives under my muted breath, I swear I could hear he Nail Fairy announce mockingly: “Congratulations! It’s an impacted toe nail, you lazy bum!”

Whenever I walk now, I try not to apply pressure on my right big toe. And it does not help that my new job as a Geoscience Seaboy aboard a seismic ship requires me to wear steel-toed boots most of the time. I limp in pain silently since I don’t want to attract the attention of my co-workers. Two weeks ago, we had this unfortunate engine failure that led to the stand-off of our vessel. In this kind of industry, when the ship stops moving, it also means the termination of all seismic work, and the subsequent breakdown of all equipment.

For days on end, we spent our twelve-hour shifts hauling heavy equipment, repairing machinery, and basically, going down and dirty. We were prisoners in our orange coveralls and white helmets, virtual slaves for the heavy tasks ahead. We’re lucky to get fifteen minute reprieves for a cup of coffee before one of our superiors will eye us disgustingly for wasting precious time. That’s why I’m pretty sure that the long hours spent standing up and dragging my feet in those steel-encrusted boots contributed to my misery now. But I didn’t dare whimper about did. The other guys might think that I’m merely trying to bail out on the hard seaman labor.

I tried to surf the internet and browsed for some ways to relieve me from the searing pain that accompanies an impacted toe nail. Some of the lousy sites suggested pain killers, but that seems rather futile since the pain will definitely go back anyway once the meds lose their numbing effects. The better sites remarked that the best way to solve the problem is to let a doctor slice some bits of your skin and remove the nail that squeezes itself in your toe. It seems really easy if only I’m not currently floating in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles away from the nearest hospital or clinic.

That brings us now to that idiotic option that I had seriously considered but failed, and that is to extract the ingrown toe nail myself. I have rummaged through the many First Aid kits readily available in various parts of the ship. The only things that are probably useful in those boxes for self-mutilation are rolls of cotton gauze (to suck up the buckets of blood that you’re about to lose) and some packets of alcohol swabs (to add more pain, and yes, to prevent infection). For my slicing tool, I ingeniously snapped one of my disposable Gillette razors and fashioned a mini-scalpel out of it. Everything would have been perfect if there was wine to drink. That should serve as my anesthetic. Tragically, no potable form of alcohol is ever allowed on seismic vessels. 

After one particularly excruciating 12-hour shift, I felt my toe throb with wild abandon. That night had to be the big night when I’ll cut myself into ribbons with my improvised tools. I took a hot shower and soaped my toe so furiously. “Stupid ingrown toe nail,” I thought to myself. “I’ll show it who’s the boss in this neighborhood!” Toweling myself dry, I meticulously prepared myself for my own operation. With cotton gauzes and isopropyl alcohol swabs within reach, I clutched my Gillette scalpel with trembling hands.

Before the sharp edge of the blade could touch my skin, I had visions of a botched self-afflicted ingrown toe nail surgery that flooded my cabin with vampire juice. Whenever a diabolic nurse extracts blood from me for routine medical exams, I have to turn my head away since a syringe full of my own blood is enough to make me feel woozy. At that instant, I knew I didn’t have the guts to cut myself. I tried to convince myself that the pain of an impacted toe nail is not so bad. At least it’s not cancer or child birth, right? Right. It’s amazing how sheer cowardice can make unpleasant things so much more bearable.

As of this writing, the evil Nail Fairy still rests on my shoulder. She belches out some really evil screeching laughter whenever my mind is not distracted enough to forget about my toe pain. I console myself with the thought that it’s a matter of days before I fly back home. Although I’ll be surely limping all the way back to Manila, at least I’ll get a proper and decent surgery. On the contrary, I never had a pedicure in my life and it would be quite interesting to have a doctor as the first person to ever fiddle with my smelly toe nails.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 at 8:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.