911: nails!!!

my sister's newly enhanced nails were subject of a freak accident involving the slamming of a car door very recently.

a friend of hers treated her to a nail salon service where she got these fake french tip extensions attached to her nails. her nails, with a clear glaze and looking an inch longer, appear stylish yet are hindering her clerical abilities. simple tasks like lifting sheets of paper from the photocopier's glass became challenging, and so is typing on the keyboard. this prompted her to decide to have her nail extensions removed as soon as possible.

as we got home from an afternoon snack at a nearby BK with our grandparents, my sister gets out from the car and slams the door shut, not knowing she accidentally had her right pointer finger sticking right by the door. with the full impact of the door slamming shut, said finger gets caught in between (specifically the fingertip). she doesn't realize the gravity of the injury until she goes up the stairs to our house's front door, where she fumbles with the keys so we can go in. at that point, she sees that her injured nail has broken horizontally in the middle, and that it has started to bleed.

take note that the nail job actually gave her nails a sort of reinforced, harder layer, but yet the impact of the car door broke through that protective shield and penetrated her nail bed.

i was just behind my sister and grandmother on the stairs, and i was wondering why they still haven't opened the door. more importantly, i noticed that my sister had dropped her celfone.

five seconds later, my sister suddenly lays flat on her back on the steps, her arms hanging out past her head. i started to utter "OHMYGOD,OHMYGOD" as i scooped her head with my hands, thankful that it didn't hit the concrete steps. her left waist was stuck on the corner edge of the screen door, and i carefully got it out of the way. my grandfather quickly lifted her back to her feet, at which point she came to and asked what happened.

she had fainted at the sight of her bleeding, cracked nail.

i assure you it's not a pleasant sight at all, knowing that the upper portion of her nail bed is now vulnerably exposed after breaking half of her nail.

i saw how her lips had become pale and her eyes dazed as she tried to wash the blood off her finger. my sister is usually tough when it comes to disgusting things, but never to the sight of her own blood oozing out from her. she blames this weakness from a terrible experience with a medical technician in the philippines who took her blood sample but played "spot the vein" on her arm with a needle. the repetitive poking of the needle on her arm caused her to feel nauseated, and later she threw up her stomach fluids. imagine if she had a full stomach then.

this is why i'm not fit to be a nurse or a doctor: i tried to remove a tiny chip of the broken nail as my sister had wanted, but i was afraid i would aggravate the bleeding and the pain. we gave up on that mission, because the broken nail had somehow adhered itself to the nailbed. i did apply betadine solution all over her nail and then put a sterile pad over it and wrapped it with tubular gauze specially designed for finger cuts/abrasions (something i bought earlier at CVS). i'm just clumsy with instruments and i'm bad at following medical-related instructions, especially when under pressure.

my sister claims it's not the french tip nails' fault, that it was all just an accident. however, she swore that it was going to be her first and last nail job of that nature, ever.