Wednesday, January 15, 2020

A Petty But Real Annoyance and Deconstructing the Human Body

Paper Cuts

They are a good example.  A careless gesture, a wrong move and your finger is bleeding like a stuck pig.  Oh! and it stings like hell!  Speaking of hell, what the hell is this?  It's a papercut and it's usually to a finger; said finger apparently containing the nerve endings of every one of them in the entire body.

And the wound (medical people love to say "wound" rather than, for example, "piddly ass cut.") could only be as deep as the outermost layer of skin.  Where the suntan shows.

After I cut my right index finger on the very sharp edge of a can of cat food, I stopped the bleeding - toilet paper, pressure and keeping it above the heart for a quick fix until I could wash it in cold water and soft soap, carefully pat-dry it and apply Mupericin (the best antibiotic cream out there) and a band-aid.  I made an unpleasant discovery.  Wherever the cut happens to be it is going to be vulnerable to being opened up again right after the bleeding stopped.  I for one didn't realize how often and how carelessly I treat my fingers.

The good news is that it should be healed in three to seven days.  No one ever (so far at least) has died from a papercut.  Just keep a band-aid on it until it is healed.  And watch it in the future.

Obesity and Flat Feet
For no reason at all, I suddenly wondered about this.  Can one be so fat as to flatten one's own arches?

The human foot is comprised of 26 bones with more than 30 articulations.  The foot is charged with three duties:  support, shock absorption and weight bearing.  Can one be so obese as to flatten an arch?  A study of women age 20+ showed that 44 per cent of them could.  A scary thought.

Some doctors might disagree.  I once asked an orthopedic surgeon if morbidly obese (we're talking 600 pounds plus) people destroy their knees?  He said they didn't.  I mentally disagreed with him then and still today.  Even so, I have quit eating a mid-afternoon snack of perhaps cheese and crackers or a candy bar.  Better safe than sorry.



 

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