Witz Pickz: Surviving Dr. Skipper

I may or may not die because of Dr. Skipper.

I was originally going to post this over the weekend in case I didn't last until today, but I figured that while I, personally, feared my imminent doom, you all probably just wanted to be left alone to your weekends and didn't need to have my final moments detract from your enjoyment of street fairs, vintage clothes shopping, or baseball watching. Fortunately for us all, but let's be honest, primarily for me, I'm still here today to tell my tale and possibly start some sort of charity fund.*

For those of you who aren't in the know (read: not way cheap), Dr. Skipper is not the crazy captain of a crabbing vessel on Deadliest Catch. Nor is he my "on the cheap" psychiatrist or the homeless man that lives on the corner down the street. It's not a He at all. Dr. Skipper is the retarded cousin of Dr. Pepper (which makes the degree all that more impressive). When Safeway brand was immitating Dr. Pepper they thought, "We need to make this thing sound classy. What sounds like 'pepper?'" They then proceeded to select a name that not only had nothing to do with pepper or food or flavors, and instead chose the nickname of a profession to complement the prefix of another profession. The logic train was burning coal aplenty that day.

On Friday night, I was innocently carrying a bottle of Dr. Skipper to my car (as opposed to carrying the bottle to my car while kicking puppies and robbing the elderly) along with a few other items. The bottle started slipping, but being a trooper, I kept walking. As I got to the car, the bottle slipped some more and between my two fingers and I felt a sharp pain. I set the bottle down and thought everything was fine. As I was driving, however, I started to notice that the numb, tingling in my finger from the slipping bottle wasn't going away. I poked at it, pinched it, and bit it (those are my three EMT techniques-- if they don't work, I'm out of ideas). Still no feeling. It felt like a callous underneath the skin, and tingled like when your arm is juuuuust beginning to fall asleep. "Whatever, it will be better in an hour," I assumed out loud. But you know what they say about assumptions-- they're fucking dumb.

I woke up Saturday with the finger still numb and tingly. "Damn," I thought, "If 3 hours of alcohol induced pass out sleep on a couch doesn't make me heal, what will??" The rest of the day, my finger continued to feel the same. I investigated it in the shower when my hands got all wrinkly, thinking I might be able to see something like a collapsed...well, I wanted to say ventricle or vessicle, but I didn't know if those words were right. But I looked-- nothing too unusual. I spent more time than I should have investigating a scar that I later remembered was from when I punched my hand through a glass door pane (well the door kind of punched my hand), but that's a story for another day. Which left me with no answers, a numb middle finger (yeah, ok, that parts adds comedy), and made me question my current invincibility. After all, this numb finger thing is nothing if not Classic Witz.

The thoughts started churning. "I probably pinched a nerve," I thought without knowing really what that entailed. WebMD is no help when all you have to go on is, "numb finger," and, "callous inside finger." By Sunday, the phrase, "irreparable nerve damage" crept into my mind and I started to wonder how I'd feel about having a numb tip of my finger FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. Would it be cool? Would it be obnoxious? Would I somehow get really really good at something I was previously terrible at like bowling or playing piano a la the film Rookie of the Year? And yet, all the time, one thought was percolating in the back of my head-- air bubble. Somehow, a tube of some kind had been damaged, and somehow an air bubble was lingering. It's only a matter of time before that tube opens again, the bubble makes its way to my brain, and I finally manage to fall asleep before 1am only to die of a brain aneurism. I'm knocking on wood, but if that happens, I tooootally called it and expect someone to start the blog, "StuffWitzCalledAndDiedBy.Com." Even with those thoughts of my foolish death, I wasn't about to go to the doctor on a weekend (my health care ain't THAT good) and spending 60 bucks in order to email my doctor for answers just doesn't fly with me. So I did what all smart, broke peopel do and asked people who AREN'T doctors what they think. Thus far, here's the medical advice they've provided:

"That's weird, dude."
"Huh."
"Just give it a few weeks and then see a doctor." (Clearly someone betting on my death)
"You should like...I dunno."
"I don't know what to tell you about that."
"You're such a hypochondriac!"

"Yeah, we don't spend too much time in law school talking about numb fingers..."
"Oh...I guess this is a good time to say that I thought you were in med school..."
"Nope..."
"Ah."
"Ah."

I'm like the boy who cried wolf, only I cried it because THERE'S ALWAYS A FRIGGEN WOLF! Which brings us to today.

Nothing has improved as of today. I sit here typing what might be my last post ever (I mean, even if I'm ok, I'm still gonna be lazy...who knows when my last post will be?), drinking green tea and hoping that anti-oxidants somehow clean up this mess in my finger. I'm about two days away from starting to barter with higher beings, and by next weekend I'm sure I'll start giving away my stuff (which, incidentally, would have been great if the timing coincided with my moving BEFORE I put everything in my new home). It's sad to know that if I had to write a will right now, the stuff I kept while moving includes, "One box containing old concert tickets, a bag of batteries (possibly dead), and packs of matches from bars I was never very attached to in the first place," along with, "a ripped clothes hamper, broken touch light, and about 50 beat up t-shirts that I no longer wear." So enjoy that.) I need to work on my getting rid of things.

On a complete tangent, I'll conclude by saying that the "Accidental Death & Dismemberment Plan" along with "Life Insurance" freaks me out. It's like when I bet against teams I like and then say, "If my team wins, it's like I paid for the victory. If my team loses, at least I'll win some money!" Sure, my sister prooobably doesn't want me to die, but if I do, she gets to buy a home in Paris. Awkward.

So I leave you in the hopes that we meet again. If anybody reading is a doctor, feel free to donate your expert medical advice via the comments section, and remember that while I totally appreciate the readership, maybe you should be doing other things than reading blogs at work. For those of you who are med students, this is a great venue for passing along things you learn in class and proving to yourself that you know them. I'm not super-psyched that you're reading this instead of learning your knowledge sensitive profession, but since I don't foresee any of you probing my body for answers later in life (fingers particularly crossed for those of you who are going to specialize in breast cancer), I feel ok with it just this once.

I Wonder If This Is How E.T.'s Finger Felt,
Witz


*Note: If I survive, I will be keeping the money from the fund for myself. Tagline: "Witz -- Putting the 'fun' back in Charity Fund."