Twenty Things You Can Do With Twelve Stitches in Your Nose

Inspired by real events!

1. Sit around the house and ooze on a humid summer day.
2. Get children to stare.
3. Get adults to do double-takes.
4. Get the grocery delivery man to make a “That’s gotta hurt” face when you open your front door.
5. Scare away a door-to-door solicitor who’s talking up some politician because he arrived at the precise moment you got a spontaneous bloody nose, allowing you to repeat the phrase “Not a good time” with increasing levels of hostility.
6. Generally look like you sent away for one of those “movie special effects makeup” kits for kids and then chose to wear your first experiment around the house for your own amusement.
7. Constantly notice your nose in your field of vision.
8. Get your t-shirt caught on a sharp end of the thread while undressing, and then stand there with your arms over your head and the shirt over your face, wondering what the most effective solution to the problem might be.
9. Feel like you are about to sneeze at all times.
10. Occasionally actually do sneeze only blood comes out.
11. Make your own Rorschach prints on your pillow.
12. Walk around the house feeling hyperaware of corners, open cabinets, all other obstacles, Final Destination-style.
13. Decline pool parties.
14. Decline alcohol because of the antibiotics.
15. Decline activities outside your home because you’re supposed to avoid sun exposure.
16. Not kiss anyone, or at least not to the satisfaction of any party involved.
17. Apply Aquaphor liberally because your dermatologist told you doing so would prevent scarring. When you go to actually get the stitches out, get told by the urgent care physician that you shouldn’t have done that, that you should never have done that and that you’ll have to keep the stitches in two days longer. Get told instead that you should let it dry out, even though the dermatologist explicitly said that would be the worst thing to do.
18. Wonder if doctors are just making it up for kicks.
19. Weep.
20. Watch the entire first season of Sense8 even though you can’t remember any of the characters’ names except for Nomi.

In case you would like to read the gripping story of how I acquired these stitches, you can do so here.