Day 202 - Lesson Learned

I have got quite the story for all of you:

In between sessions today,  I was cutting up a ton of jalapeno peppers that mom had given me from her garden when she came down to do freezer meals with me. I was cutting them up to freeze them so they could be ready to use for whenever. There was around 15-20 jalapeno’s. After I was done, my hand started burning  a little. So I washed it off and took a rest from chopping up vegetables and hurried and snapped a picture of the jalapenos I chopped, thinking it could be my pic of the day. But then the burning sensation started getting worse and worse. 

I looked up on the internet ways to get rid of the burning, and I started trying everything from Rubbing alcohol, baking soda, lemon/lime juice, tomatoes, aloe vera, milk, vegetable oil, olive oil, lavender, peppermint, etc. The list goes on, and nothing was working. My hand burned all through the second session. It burned so bad! And it felt like it was going to keep getting worse.  The only thing that worked was keeping it in ice cold water. But even then, if I took it out of the water, it wouldn’t even last 30 seconds before I had to immerse it in the water again because the burning was so bad. Eventually it got to the point where I couldn’t have it out for 10 seconds because it literally felt like my hand was on fire! I missed the whole second session because my hand was in such pain and I was trying different things to get rid of the pain. 

The weird thing was that if you looked at my hand, nothing looked wrong. It wasn’t red, it looked completely normal, but if flesh could burn, I swear that was what it would feel like. After 7 hours of burning, and having to have it moving in water, I asked Clint to give me a blessing, and his brother in law came over and helped. Then within 2 hours of that blessing the burning had decreased to only my fingertips.  Then by 11:00 that night it was bearable enough to fall asleep without being in the water.  I woke up at 1:30 in the morning and the pain was completely gone. I figure my hand was “burning” for 10-11 hours. Isn’t that crazy? I have never been so happy to have a functioning hand that doesn’t have to be immersed in water. I couldn’t do anything because I had to have it in the water all the time. Clint was so great to just take care of Jonas and me, and give him a bath, put him to bed and all that stuff. He’s such a good dad and husband! 

 I cannot even describe the pain except that it was on fire. It was awful! I will never ever touch a jalapeno again, unless I have gloves, but even then I still don’t want to touch a hot pepper. I think I have developed a fear of them. I never want to go through that again. It was the worst thing EVER!  I read that what happens is the oils from the jalapeno get down to your nerves and that’s where it causes the pain. It doesn’t do any tissue damage, or outside damage. It’s like it’s playing a mind trick on you because it’s the nerves that it’s tricking into that burning sensation. It’s crazy. 

It was a crazy day.  Yes, my lesson was learned. I will always wear gloves, or some type of protection when cutting jalapenos. Or I'll just have Clint do it.