I spent the first two hours of 2022 in an emergency room getting stitches on my toe. It was my first time ever needing stitches and my first time ever being treated for something in a hospital. Warning – some mildly graphic toe imagery follows.

Basically, here’s what went down. It was 2 minutes till midnight on New Years Eve in Montana, and I was walking through a dark hallway. There was a broken frame and a huge glass cover sitting in the hallway and as I rounded the corner I accidentally carved my index toe on the glass!

I initially thought I had just stubbed it bad, but after turning the light on I realized nope I have in fact sliced my toe a bit. It was more bloody than painful, and there was a bit of skin flap situation going on. It was unclear how deep and close to the bone it got. My boyfriend came over and immediately was in damage control mode – helping me stop the bleeding. I’m incredibly grateful that he was so supportive cause I was pretty rapidly going into a mild state of shock.

The way my body systemically reacted to the situation surprised me. I got extremely anxious and started to feel the beginnings of a panic attack. Then I threw up and felt better although was now pretty embarrassed. I would have thought cause I’m a woman and see blood monthly I would be less squeamish… but there we go.

Meanwhile, my boyfriend was on it (again) and made the call that a hospital would be best cause no Urgent Care was open and my toe had a deep enough cut that it was better to be safe and get it cared for professionally. Surprisingly, my toe really didn’t hurt that much. We wrapped my toe up in a bandaid and a clean sock and I wore a pair of his shoes since my toe couldn’t fit into my own without further damaging it. He drove me to the nearest hospital and since there was literally no other patient in the waiting area I got seen immediately. I’m super grateful for that and it occurred to me that if this had happened in NYC I would have likely needed to wait quite a bit longer.

They irrigated my toe – basically flushing it out with water. Then the doc came in checked it out and recommended stitches. The anesthetic was more painful than the actual stitches – which means it did its job well. I avoided looking at the procedure while it happened for the most part cause I was worried I was gonna be sick again.

After leaving the hospital I kept the toe clean and regularly applied a topical antibiotic ointment. 10 days later it was time to remove the stitches. You can opt to have a doctor or Urgent Care help you take it out – but the ER doc had assured me you can do it yourself too. I opted to do it myself cause it would be less expensive… But it was a freaky experience involving a tweezer, scissors, a lot of patience, and a little bit of nausea. I freaking did it though. And it’s healing up really well.

Learned quite a few lessons from this one but most importantly that THE BODY IS AMAZING. Seriously the way it can heal is nothing short of miraculous. We just need to give it a fighting chance.

Check out my IG for some footage of me removing the stitches from my toe… if you’re curious. But totally understand if you’d rather pass ;-).