Story tiiiiiiime. This ones lengthy, heads up.

Gather around everybody as I tell the story about a time my laziness almost cost me a thumb. Stay tuned at the bottom of the page for pictures. This is your warning though, because some are pretty graphic. (I feel like it’s honorable for me to include I spelt graphic with an ‘f’ at first…)

In the first year of the Covid pandemic, I lived on St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. A few of my friends came to visit me that November, and we had an absolute blasty-blast. One day, towards the end of everyones trip, we decided to go over to the neighboring island, St. John. Before we hopped on the ferry, my friends and I stopped off at the grocery store, cooler in tow, and bought goods to make a beach charcuterie. *Cue Bridesmaids reference – ‘It’s meats and cheeses.’ *

After hours of being in the sun, you can only imagine how hard the beach charcuterie slapped. I mean, we had the works. Prosciutto, Capacola, assortment of cheeses, oranges, grapes, we even had jellies. Though it was delicious, we did not finish it all. So a good majority of it came back to St. Thomas with us; where it resided… in the same cooler.. for upwards of three weeks. My friends had left the island, I had returned to life as normal, and every morning I walked past that cooler and thought “I should do something with that.”

I finally reached my breaking point, really only because it was my uncles cooler and he needed it back. No surprise to anyone with a sense of what happens to food when left out in 80 degree weather for three weeks, when I opened that cooler I discovered a gnarly biodome growing inside. Rather than finding some gloves and emptying out the forgotten-charcuterie, I grabbed a roll of paper towel and started shoveling hot meats and cheeses into a trash bag. Bare. Handed… TRUST when I tell you, looking back at this story it is SHAMEFUL to look that truth in the eye. Dumbass. 

Now is a good point in the story to mention that at this time in my life, I worked at a coffee/sandwich shop. So, often, I would have to slice bagels. Also, important to note, I am some what of a liability with knives. Therefore, I almost always had little cuts on my hands from slicing said bagels. This is crucial to the story because, if you recall from the last paragraph, I was raw-dogging this dirty cooler with my bare hands. 

About 2 days after the cleanup, my right thumb started to become swollen and sore. At first, I was blissfully ignorant. But by the end of the day the pain could no longer be ignored. By the time I woke up the next morning, my thumb pad was the size of a small grape and a white circle under the skin had appeared. Still leaving it up to “gods will,” I did nothing. Though I did express some concerns with my aunt and uncle who tried to help me pop the white circle. Go figure, we did not have any luck. And while we did sterilize the needle, I’m sure poking the hell out of it was not the best for the healing process. After that, I tried to go to the doctor, but had a very very mild case of Covid and no one would see me. Valid. So, I just lived with the four fingers on my right hand picking up the slack for another 36 hours. 

Finally, I scared myself enough into going to the emergency room. I don’t know if you have ever been to an emergency room on an island in the middle of the ocean…. but there’s not exactly groundbreaking innovation going on. My first visit, the doctor was pretty useless. He (important to note, HE) concluded that there was a minor infection in my thumb and barely tried to cut it out. Gave me an antibiotic shot in the butt, prescribed me antibiotics to take for a week, and told me to have a good life. After five days on the medication, nothing got better. In fact, it got much, much worse. The white spot under my thumb had gotten bigger in diameter, and my entire thumb was about the girth of a fucking bratwurst. My lovely mother advised that I should probably go back to the emergency room.

This time, I got the incredible hero, Dr. Gooth; who informed me that I was about 24 hours away from going sepsis and could possibly lose my thumb…… wtf. She cut out what she could and then referred me to an orthopedic surgeon (since my quarantine time frame was almost up.) The next day, slightly numbed but completely awake, the surgeon, Dr. Chase, cut a good majority of my thumb clear out. So. Much. Blood. It was insane. Even the nurse had to leave the room because she “hated blood and was queasy.” ????? After about 40 minutes, the doctor wrapped me up and sent me to go get the medicine he prescribed. (On my way, I got pulled over for running a red light, but was immediately let go because the officer saw me sobbing in pain. Shout out to that guy. Whatever he is doing, I hope he’s blessed.)

So really y’all, the moral of this story is two things. Beach charcuterie really is a great fuckin idea. I would highly recommend. But please PLEASE clean your cooler out IMMEDIATELY after usage. Don’t be lazy, learn from my mistakes. Thank you to Dr. Gooth for not brushing me off and saving my life; and thank you to Dr. Chase for saving my thumb and not giving my family the chance to call me OTT, One-Thumb Tori, unironically for the rest of my life. 

Please enjoy the pictures from this adventure. Keep those thumbs up!