Mary Beth’s waxing adventure

Mary Beth writes:

You may think that I’m trying to flip you off in this picture, but I’m actually showing off my latest battle wound. I was helping my niece wax her skis about three weeks ago. I did the final run your finger along the side of the base to check for the extra wax thing, when my middle right finger caught a frayed piece of the edge of the ski. At first, I thought I had just got a small sliver of it in my hand, but with more in depth exploration, I realized it was quite a large piece which extended through the entire width of my finger. I could actually put my fingers on each edge and and move it back and forth between my fingers like a poker. I was a little amused by this, as I showed my niece, but she thought this was quite gross and told me to stop. After spending around 30 min. trying to get it out myself, my hand was quickly becoming more painful and swollen, so I headed to urgent care at 10:30 at night. They confirmed to me that they had never seen anything else like this before. After about 20 min of working on it and threatening that I may have to see a hand surgeon the next day, the doc was successful, or so I thought. She pulled out about an 1 inch of fine ski base.

Boy, did I need a beer or something much stiffer, but unfortunately the next day was a work day. Everything seemed to be healing well, until about a week later I had this nagging feeling that there was a little more base left in my finger. After several unsuccessful attempts to try to find the base myself during the next few weeks and trying to convince my husband and my mom to give it a “college try”, I made an appointment with a hand surgeon. He was a little skeptical about it, but since he is a family friend, I think he felt obligated to try to pacify me. He injected my finger with the usual pain numbing med’s and some epinephren to cause vasoconstriction and slow the bleeding process. He dug for about 10 min, before he placed a tourniquet on my finger to further stop the bleeding. He suddenly saw it, but had to work for several more minutes before he was able to get it out. He finally got it out! Hurray, no more digging! I will definitely think twice before I do a quick finger sweep along the side of my ski to check for extra wax. I hope you will too!