Wives Tale -- Success Story

I had a wood chip in my thumb.  And, I have to tell you, it wasn't just a little old sliver that slipped under a thin layer of skin...it was embedded deep into my thumb.  I was digging around in my landscaping looking for green shoots to assure me that spring was indeed coming and I guess I got a little carried away.

I must say it caused me some pain and it looked kind of gross, so I grabbed a tweezers, and asked Cal to operate.  He attempted to remove the foreign object, but ended up only getting the exposed tip out.  His advice to me was, "You just need to get a needle and dig around in there to get it out." 

Excuse me!!  I'm a little squemish.  The thought of digging around in my flesh with a needle, well, it wasn't going to happen.  So I decided to ignore it.

For a week I lived without using my thumb.  But being the logical-thinker that I am, I decided ignoring it probably wasn't a good long-term solution.  However, "digging" and "needles" were still out of the question. There had to be another way.

I then recalled something my grandma once recommended as a sure-fire solution for removing foreign objects from a wound...she had once wrapped a cabbage leaf around her foot in order to get out a piece of glass, and it had worked.  However, I didn't have a head of cabbage handy so that wasn't an option.

So I decided to go with another method...handed down from Cal's side of the family.  I took a piece of bread, dipped it in milk, wrapped it around my thumb, covered it with saran wrap and taped it up.  This is how I slept all night.

In the morning, I couldn't wait to remove the cast of bread and see if the magic had worked.  I was initially disappointed because there was no stick laying in the bread.  But then I made just one tiny push on the open wound and out popped the stick.  It was cool.  So here's what all the fuss was about:

I swear the picture makes it look smaller than it was -- and I need you to imagine this pushed straight into my thumb.

I know I'm a wimp and I'm not sure why I admit these things, but I think you just might thank me for this advice the next time you have a screaming child with a sliver who is squirming all around as you attack with your tweezers. Now you know there is a kinder, gentler way.