Broken toad

While Andrew and I were moving a (big, heavy) bookcase, he...pulled it into his (bare) foot and smashed his toe. This was on...Saturday...last week. I remember because soon after we got it outside (for someone else to pick up) Andrew had to leave for the adult session of stake conference (stuffing his poor, throbbing toe into his dress shoes). 

It wasn't so painful that he thought it was broken. In fact, he was upset about it because online it said a hematoma of this nature was caused by trauma to the digit. 

"It wasn't trauma!" he fake-raged. "It was a light tap! I'm fine!"

His toe felt differently and remained painful throughout the week. The discolouration of his toenail was quite severe. 

I believe he will lose that toenail. 

He insists he won't. 

But he was in quite a bit of pain all week. I told him that if the pressure kept building we'd have to go to the doctor for a nail trephination to allow the blood stuck under the toenail to come out of his body.

He felt that drilling a hole into his toenail was a terrible idea. 

"It'll just heal on its own!" he insisted. 

"It'll fall off..." I warned.

"It'll be fine."

And then we went swimming as a family on Saturday. The kids love when Andrew comes to the pool because he'll roughhouse with them a bit more than I ever will. So he was in the deep end with them—not even in the pool with them yet (thank goodness), just on the deck, picking them up and chucking them into the water. 

Benjamin decided to try to challenge Andrew on one of these tosses and ended up...stomping on Andrew's bad toe...which the toe understood as a nail trephination. 

Blood. Was. Everywhere. 

Gushing out of his toe.

Everywhere. 

Andrew hobbled over to a chair. I brought him some paper towels. And...that toe just bled and bled and bled. 

"I'll bet that feels good," I said, just as he was sitting down in the chair. "Does your toe feel better?"

"No!" he said. "My toes does not feel better!"

And then about ten minutes later he said, "Actually, my toe does feel better now. It's no longer throbbing. There's no pressure...it feels pretty good."

He had a whole pile of nasty paper towels, but his toe had mostly stopped bleeding. 

Remembering my own broken-toad regimen, I've been making him soak it in epsom salts.

Soon he'll be a fixed-up froggy!

(For years we've been saying "purple frog email" instead of "blue toadflax" so one day this week when I was asking Andrew how his poor "broken-toed" self was, I heard "broken toad" and now can't get it out of my head).

For the record, my toenail is still wonky from its trauma all those years ago. It simply does not connect to my nail bed until about halfway down the toe...but only on the outside of the toe. The inside of my toe connects all the way. So I can see this weird 90° angle jag in my nail line, where it's pink (connected) and then white (not connected). And overall that toenail remains super gross (but I think I've lost that particular toenail on three separate occasions, so...that's on me for being clumsy)*. 

* Once a dance partner (not Andrew) romped on it during the Lindy Hop. And then I lost it after running a half-marathon in what were evidently not the right shoes. And then I fell off a a stool and ended up kicking through the wall on my way down in an effort to keep my pregnant-self from landing flat on my back. Can confirm that such injuries are 10/10 not a good time.