Over a month ago I injured one of my fingers on a shard of glass from a mixing bowl that I had dropped in the sink. Unwittingly, I didn’t realize I hadn’t gotten all the glass. So when I went to wipe down the counters, I stabbed myself under a nail. I pulled out the glass and continued on for a month with that finger periodically bleeding whenever it got jammed.
When I went to work at my CNA job, I mentioned my ongoing issues with that finger to my friend Sarah. She being much older and wiser than me tells me that I might have not gotten all the glass out.
I went home to try again getting it out, only to get some out. My finger felt a little better but the infection that was taking place just seemed to continue. I being stubborn, didn’t want to go to the hospital to get it looked at, so I asked my stepfather, who is a nurse, to look at it. He tried and got a little more, but it wasn’t enough.
Off I went to work again for four days in a row. Four days of jamming my finger, getting a cold, while having extended family issues. Let’s just say I was at my breaking point.
When I finally got two days off, it wasn’t ‘till there next day that I had an idea. More than a month ago I had treated a hen of mine for bumble foot. I had kept on forgetting and putting off treating her, so the bumble foot had gotten pretty big.
I grabbed the hen, was attacked by my rooster Blackie, and brought her inside. I started a hen pedicure with hot water and Epsom salt, placed her in it and had to trap her until the water went cold. I then took her out and started to pry the bumble out gently. By now it was around the size of a marble and was in the webbing between her toes. When I got it out, there was some skin hanging around, so I kept her inside and released her the following morning when I noticed it had already tightened up.
I thought to myself, if that helped loosen that bumble foot, it might do the same for this glass. I ended up boiling water and mixing it with Epsom salt. I put my fingers in and left it until the water started getting cold. When I took my fingers out, I used my cuticle cutter to feel for the glass and cut out the area where the glass was and the skin that was on top of it.
Lo and behold! I finally got the glass! It was around ¼” long and paper thin! I put some Isopropyl alcohol on it, bacitracin and a bandage on. The following morning, it didn’t hurt at all. Even the infection had gone down and I could jam my finger without any pain!
So whatever lessons you learn on your homestead, you can apply it to other aspects of your life and your homestead. The same goes for any other topic or material. Things and ideas can be reused and reapplied to different areas. Over and over. You just have to let time, thinking and even an outside thought to prompt you towards a solution. You will feel foolish at how slow you took to realize it. But you will truly learn but then.
The Black Cherry Azalea 