Thursday, October 25, 2007

Chemistry, it's everywhere

So the dh is teaching swim lessons for the dd's swim school right now (long story, I won't bore you with the details). Anyway it's a big competition pool and one of the ways to get to the bathrooms is outside through a breezeway and you're not supposed to go bare foot but of course, the dh does. He came home the other night saying that he had a piece of glass in his foot and would I get it out. Sure yeah I say and then we both promptly forgot about it. He comes home the next night after swim lessons and says 'My foot hurts' so we stop futzing about and go upstairs to my craft room (aka room of all things surgical and now used for paper crafting) and I bust out the materials. The dd is now asking, 'Will it hurt?' 'Are you going to make daddy cry?' and all sorts of questions I had great answers for but really couldn't say in front of the kid. Ah, such is life. So I've got the exacto knife, 3 sets of tweezers, the Ott lite centered on the foot and the dd is bouncing back and forth worriedly from a chair to the side, very anxious and nervous that I'm going to hurt daddy. We had to take a splinter out of her foot once, it was HILARIOUS and will probably result in many many therapy sessions but that's a whole other story. So it was deep but he had already sliced his foot open there trying to remove it himself so barring any serious digging I really couldn't do much more. So I squeeze. And this wee slice of glass comes sliding out. It had been in for 2 days so there was probably a lovely pus capsule that helped it slime out. Anyway I tell him to go and put some peroxide on it. And he, being a guy, is sloppy with it and gets some on his hand. He's wondering why it's burning his hand. His hand now looks like the skin is a dry and sanded off. Now look, he doesn't usually shower after getting out of the pool. So lets do some basic chemistry here. Chlorine. Peroxide. H2O2 and Cl makes something...hmmm....HCl sound familiar? Ouch. Knew I got that degree in chemistry for some reason...

No comments: