How I ruined my day by trimming my nails

This post, like others that will follow it, is a continuation of my Gambling On Life series.

I'm going to keep this short: You see, I fucked up.. Bad. Bad enough that I ruined my day, and probably the next few days. Typing requires a lot more slow deliberation to ensure I don't make it worse.

I trimmed my nails Friday.. Both hands and toes.

I assume the gears are turning in your head right now, wondering why that would ruin as much as 72 hours of my life.. right?

Well, here's the thing: All these new nerve issues I've been having?

The skin under my nails is.. particularly sensitive. It's a risk of horrible pain just attempting to trim my nails. I can't feel how close I am to that skin as I run the clippers under the nail, and sometimes just even touching the tips of my fingers with the clippers can cause agony.

Once I've trimmed them, though? Shit, better hope I got it right runs through my head.

As it turns out, I didn't this time.

On my right foot, one nail was a little too close.. So touching that nail with any appreciable pressure feels like someone shoving needles underneath the toenail.

On my fingers? Well, that's even more of a dicey proposition.

When I trim my fingernails, I have to also make sure to take off the corners; otherwise I end up scratching up myself, and have even cut my own flesh with those sharp little edges, not realizing I did so because the nerves aren't in the "bad times" switch yet and my regular pain is so elevated I don't notice shit like papercuts until I try to do things like take a bath (or when I see the damned blood on my clothes).

Anyway, knowing this, you'll be able to look at the image at the top of this and see that.. Yup, I fucked up. Multiple fingers look like that.

What made things worse was yesterday afternoon I went out and checked out a couple pistols I'm interested in after getting my hair cut (by the way, I'm currently raising funds to make my birthday not suck because of all the medical expenses, so feel free to help me out k pls thnx): Both are DA/SA (Double Action/Single Action), so the manual of arms is a little more complicated than your regular modern striker-fired fare. I used my fingers a lot (but I will fucking own a Beretta 80x Cheetah, dammit).

The fun thing about all this is the more pain I experience, the more my nerves go nucking futz, which means I experience more pain.. And you get the idea.

The irony of this all is I was planning on coding up my new bit of creative coding: Project Death Watch (the working title, just a bit of gallows humor for myself) is a bit of web art that will transform depending on how fucked-up my heart rate is (and lately you'd assume I was taking the bad drugs with how fucked-up it is).

My new fitbit thinks I'm constantly exercising. Just sitting here typing? 115bpm.

Anyway, I managed to write more than I thought I would; Bitching is a nice catharsis, at least (as is my "Hello, my pain level is.." patch I'm rocking today - buy it and slide it to the fucking max).

(Additional bonus content: I have a fucking awesome new patch design coming soon, and not even this pain will keep me from screaming Foxtrot Delta Tango. You should follow me on BlueSky if you want to see the teasers and when this shit comes out.)