There is no other hand

So since slicing off the top of my right thumb wasn't bad enough, I decided it would be a good idea to spill boiling water on my left hand and give myself a second degree burn on Tuesday. I mean, what do I need hands for, anyway? You know, it's not like my favorite holiday is this week and my friend and her kids are coming over and I have lots to cook. Nah. No big deal.

But in case you are wondering, here is a list of things that it is really, really hard to do without hands.

1. Wash your hair.
2. Chop onions.
3. Put the leash on The Dog.
4. Open a letter.
5. Open a door with a round knob.
6. Open anything.
7. Trim your bangs.

Yeah, I really shouldn't have tried that last one. Maybe no one in China will notice how crooked they are. They kind of look exactly like this.

Today, for a change, I thought it might be fun to have some frat boy "doctor" stick needles into my neck and dig around for tissue. Yep, thyroid biopsy time. It went well, but they forgot to tell me how much my neck would hurt afterward. I'm not worried that they found anything because the doctors were very chatty. See, there is that moment when you get diagnosed with something bad where everyone who was all friendly and talking to you before suddenly stops talking to you and goes silent when they see the bad thing. And then you know that the thing you were afraid of is what is happening. It happened to me during the ultrasound before I lost the baby, and again when I was misdiagnosed with cancer that I didn't have. But today, the only moment that made my heart stop a little was when the very young and inexperienced "doctor" at the teaching hospital put in the needle and the attending surgeon said it was a good thing he had used anesthetic first because that was a bad angle. Um, maybe that's why my neck hurts so much? They chatted the whole time and talked to me a lot while upside down. See, when you get a thyroid biopsy, your head is hanging down off the end of the bed and everything is upside down. So I'm fairly certain I will never recognize frat boy doctor again, unless I can see the underside of his chin. It was fairly bizarre. But it's over and I'm very happy about that. I wonder if they noticed my crooked bangs.

A real, working Ebola vaccine would be way, way better than a brownie. Apparently, NIH is close to having one. They say they still have a ways to go, but that would be so amazing! Go NIH! Then maybe idiot governors of small states where no one has ever had Ebola will stop panicking and persecuting courageous health care workers who volunteer to go save people they don't know. Yeah, you know who I'm talking about. Totally unimpressed by the fear mongering. Thousands of people dying from preventable diseases, yet tax money gets spent on imprisoning a nurse for fear she might spread a disease she never had. That's a wise use of public funds, that is. Ugh.