Mother of God.

My finger hurts. On our way to work Friday Brett and I listened to Philip Glass, and the cd was still playing when he came to pick me up again on our way home. It's nice music for a quiet drive in the dark when you're tired, but when you're more awake, it's sunny outside, and you're stuck in rush hour traffic it's a little boring. At least that's how *I* feel. So after sitting on the freeway for awhile, I turned it up from quiet-background level to not-that-easy-to-talk-over level, and said "I LOVE this melody!" (there was of course, not much of a melody going on.)
So Brett voted to listen to Gorillaz, and I certainly didn't object. But then when I went to grab the case for the Philip Glass disk (which had been thrown into the backseat), something sliced under my fingernail. I STILL don't know what it was, because Brett had a lot of crap back there that he was bringing home from work, but it felt like the corner of a plastic report cover or something. The point jammed under my fingernail, and then when I jerked my hand away from it in pain I somehow managed to slice it all the way over and through THE SIDE OF MY FINGERNAIL, instead of back out past the tip, the way it came in. So it hurt SO badly, and when I finally stopped pinching it and howling, I saw that it was bleeding UNDER the nail. Not a good sign. Brett suggested that I keep putting pressure on it so that I didn't get more blood under there, which sounded like a good idea to me, because as someone who's never lost a nail before I was hoping I could just squeeze it until it like, reconnected or something. But no.
It was really painful, but sort of okay when we got home, but the nail was definitely detached from the skin on one side, and it appeared to be ripped or split somehow, but I didn't want to mess with it, because IT'LL JUST DECIDE TO STICK ITSELF BACK TOGETHER, RIGHT?
So then later that night we get home from Megan's super fun surprise pizza birthday party and decide to snuggle up in front of an episode of Farscape, but Brett's head was smooshing me, so I tried to shove him over a little and hair from his beard went INSIDE the newly formed split between my fingernail and the skin on the side of the nail. Holy. Crap. I actually cried tears. And could hardly speak. It was like NEEDLES under my nail. UNDER my nail. And then it was really bleeding, and swollen, and throbbing. We bound it up in a tight bandaid, but when I woke up Saturday morning the end of my finger was comically swollen and red, and the nail was all oozy and bloody. It stayed that way until late yesterday, when it started to be not just a dull pain all the time and a stronger dull pain when touched, but also a SHARP pain when anything brushed against it just the right way. So a new bandaid was applied.
It still hurts just as bad this morning, so I pulled back the bandaid to take a peak, and the side of my nail is gone. I don't know when THAT happened...it almost seems like it just turned to jelly and wiped off or something, but I don't think that actually happens. It's not that big of a part that's missing; about two thirds of the length of the nail are gone from a 1mm strip on the outside edge of my left pointer finger (which sucks, because I'm left handed). But it's lame because it's not the two thirds from the tip back, it's two thirds from just above the cuticle forward. And it's all puffy and discolored, and it looks SO disgusting, and it hurts like you wouldn't believe. Maybe I'll post a picture later, if anyone wants to see. It's really gnarly.