Be healed, brother!
February 6th, 2016
So over the last couple of weeks, on and off, I've been mortifying all one of you regular readers with the horror that has befallen my hands. Both of them have been in pretty bad shape, but my right hand has really been a lot worse than the left. This tells me that I am correct in the notion that all of this awfulness has been caused by an allergic reaction to something, as I'm right handed.
At work, I tend to expose myself to any number of distressing chemicals, mostly because I build high power electronics for the Global Hawk ™ unarmed aerial vehicle. Well, it, the Triton ™ unarmed aerial vehicle, and.... something else. We don't really know what the 'something else' is, as this other vehicle uses the same parts that we build for the other two aircraft, but still.
Most of the time this is just solder flux, but a lot of the time other things get on me, despite my best attempts at avoiding them. Lots of flux remover, for one thing, but a few other things, like polyurethane coatings and various formulations of Loctite ™ and probably asbestos in the walls. They keep saying there isn't any left, but then again, they keep finding more of the stuff.
Reassuring, no?
But yeah, even though my hand has been in deplorable condition for about a month, now, it seems to have finally sorted itself out. For the most part. The skin on and around my knuckles still feels like sandpaper, which is something my skin does anyway on my elbows and ankles. It has always done this, now and then, but clean living has, for the most part, cleaned that mess up. Yay?
So I'm used to this particular texture of flesh. I assume it will heal itself and go away in good time like the previous injuries did, because my skin is resilient overall, except for that on my face. Naturally, of course. Sure, you might just say that's more of me beating myself up, but at least my features have improved slightly after my dentist sanded off 3/16ths of an inch off my two front teeth.
Those things, they were the result of my losing them as a wee youth, falling face first onto a cement patio and seeing them shattered. Growing back, they were the stereotypical buck teeth, and I always hated the darn things. Luckily for me, in the process of doing several thousand dollars of unrelated dental work, my new dentist just shaved them down for free. In just two minutes!
Well, as much as my job otherwise sucks, at least I have Cadillac ™ insurance, right?