Welcome to Gaia! ::

*sighs* okay. i've been through this explenation so much it gives me heartburn, so everybody pay attention.

*clears his throat, cracks his knuckles, and gets to it*

About four or five weeks ago i was working as usual. I'd picked up a pile of dried date-palm (Phoenix dactylifera) leaves, put them in the work-ute's trailer, and had driven them to a dumping ground.

The trailer was one of those ones that had raised guards so s**t doesnt go flying everywhere when you hit the freeway, so i had to lift the leaves up over those to chuck them into the tip. I wore gloves, because a dried date-palm leaf was like grabbing a wire with flat spikes sticking out sharply at regulalr intervals - and i didn't wanna get stuck.

I was lifting them out of the trailer, tossing them over, getting all hot and sweaty coz it had just gone to summer, and suddenly i felt something jab me. I'd gotten stuck.

But not just stuck.

It my sudden jolt of pain, i'd accidently broken the spike off in my forearm. It measured around 22mm long, and ran deep into the muscle, missing the tendon and snuggling underneath it. I could feel it under my skin, and i couldn't remove it with my first aid kit. At this point i couldn't make a complete fist.

Going to my local GP, i told him what happened and he gave me some local and operated. I figured he'd get it easy, seeing as he has credentials as a heart surgeon, but he couldn't find it after half an hour or searching. So he sent me to the hospital.

There i sat down with a surgeon, who gave me more local and sliced my arm right open, holding the flesh open with several pairs of clamps or forceps or whatever they are called. I could literally watch my muscle move as i flexed my fingers up and down. He really put his arm into it, but it kept slipping further into the muscle the more he reached for it, so he decided to put me under with general.

After two hours and two ultrasounds, even one right on my muscle, they still couldn't find it - they'd been too rough in their digging, and it was impossible to find thanks to the trauma my arm had gone through.

So the surgeon sewed me up and told me to wait for a week, to let it get infected. Then, when they cut me open again, they could follow the pus back to it and pull it out.

A week goes by, and i'm still not infected - my body is too strong. So they get in an ultrasound expert, who after almost an hour of pushing that ******** sonar doodad into my stitches, finally found it. It had moved up so far it had gone into the compressed muscle sinew, at the top of the wrist. If they didn't remove it soon, it would do serious damage.

The first surgeon admits defeat, scared that he'd do more damage if he went in. So another guy comes in and tells me he'll get it out in a jiff.

They put me under again, another hour and they finally get it out. by now it's been in there for almost a fortnight. I've got it in a jar on my desk.

I'm not going to go into the bullshit that followed after. Lets just say my boss didn't beleive the sevarity of my injury - i couldn't even hold my workers comp forms still when i tried to sign them - and it took a doctor to sit down with him and show him what would happen if i strained it too much.

Now it's on the mend. I've lost most feeling in my middle finger, thanks to nerve damage done when it was moving further into the muscle, but the docs say it'll come back in a few months.

And thats about it. Any questions?

Don't trust Shou. He'll take your money and skip town.

I'm willing to barter.

Thank you Shou. I'm sure that'll make me feel safe when I can't carry it with me onto my college campus.

Or a pipe wrapped with chains.

Glad your ok Tom.

Which is more than any of these other idiots can say.

I'm sorry Ed... I have a hard time expressing concern for people I barely know when I can clearly already see they're ok.