Splinters.
Inevitably, you get them on your dominant hand. So you’re left with the choice of letting someone else remove them (always less helpful, they can’t tell when they’re hurting you), taking them out with your clumsy hand, or leaving them in so they fester and keep on hurting for days.
But I’ve developed a technique for splinters which seems to work. It involves dispensing with the tweezers, and instead making a clean slice with a very sharp pointy scalpel – ideally, a #11 blade (FTITK). The slice, if well-placed, lets the splinter fall right out without mucking around trying to grab the end with a tweezer. I replace a painful, festering foreign object with a clean, sterile, shallow cut that heals easily within a day.
Of course, I’m a bit ambidextrous, which helps. And I have access to scalpels.
On other fronts, I’m enjoying my sick day. Caught up on email and now I’m going to make some progress on the work I didn’t do yesterday or the day before. Good to be feeling enough better that I can concentrate. Supposed to be mild this afternoon – not exactly cool, but below 90 – so might go outside and dig in the garden a bit.