I know I haven’t been posting in awhile and I apologize. I have had a bunch of things to contend with lately, many I don’t think I should write about - although I really, really want to... Let’s just say it is all work related and I’m in the process of thinking some things over very seriously.
I can say this though.
Last night I was cutting up a jalopeno for our fajita dinner, and stupid me didn’t think I needed to be careful with my eczema.
Well, I was wrong.
By the time I was done cutting the pepper, my hands had already started to burn. The only smart thing I did was remove my rings before it got worse, because they would have had to have been cut off. Before I knew it, I was having the world’s worst reaction. My hands grew into little red balloons and my knuckles disappeared in front of my eyes.
It felt like I had literally lit my skin on fire.
The only relief I got was when I plunged my hands in ice water. So that’s what I did…
For the next 3 ½ hours…
I sat soaking my hands in a bucket of ice water.
6 seconds. That was all I could stand to have them out of that water. Every once in awhile I would try to lift my hand out of the water, but by the sixth count, I was plunging them back in.
When I had to get up and go somewhere where my bucket of ice water couldn’t follow, I had a frozen towel wrapped around them.
I have Never. Ever. Been in so much pain from a pepper. I drenched them in my eczema steroid cream. Nothing happened. Then I tried aloe. That only made it worse. I even tried butter. Nothing again. I was afraid to take Benedril because I had a couple beers before this whole thing happened and I didn’t want yet another reaction from that. I was starting to feel hopeless. I was afraid my balloon fingers would pop right off my hands and pppppwwwewwww away out the window if this went on much longer.
And one word kept going through my head.
Dumb-Ass.At one point, I attempted to wash the butcher knife so Earl could cut the broil for our fajitas. As soon as the warm water hit my fingers I squealed like a pig and huge balls of tears swelled up in my eyes. Needless to say, I didn’t do that again. When it came time to eat, Earl held the fajita up for me to take a bite out of while my hands soaked into icy prunes.
I sat with my bucket and sulked, becoming bitcher and bitcher with each passing minute. Oh I was a joy, that's for sure. I watched the story of Dolly Parton because I was in too much pain to care, and I wondered if she ever had a pepper problem. It was getting close to midnight and I was getting nervous that this condition of mine was not going to go away. In fact, it seemed to be getting worse. Finally I used my elbows to open the medicine cabinet and found some bactracine ointment. It was at that time too that I vowed to wean my hands from their ice water. Perhaps if I could just get past the point of them warming back up to room temperature, they would stop throbbing enough so I could sleep…
That my friends, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do…
Well I don’t know if the bactracine was actually helping or if 3 ½ hours was long enough for this reaction to get its kicks, but I managed to stick it out passed the room temperature stage, and yes, they started to calm down.
At last. I could sleep.
So aside from what else has been going on in my life, I have learned a valuable lesson about what not to do with jalopenos.
