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So Arcane probably thinks I've gone a bit over the edge at this point.^_^' Yesterday, in an effort to ensure that one of the practices we've been using recently at the hospital where I work was humane, I surgically stapled myself to see how much it might hurt. It looks painful, but we use them to affix patches of pain medication to our patients sometimes, and also to close incisions occasionally. Now there's no way to make closing an incision not be uncomfortable, but I was a little concerned about the patches- even though it is high grade pain medication that we're fixing in place, it would still take a while for the meds to kick in.

I tried so many times to staple myself- and just couldn't bring myself to do it. So I asked our doctor to do the first one for me, while I looked the other way.^_^' It was kind of an odd request I suppose, "Excuse me, Dr. B- but could you please staple a piece of tape or something to my arm?" What was even more funny was that she knew exactly what I was trying to do, was eager to help, and started making suggestions for how to make it a more accurate representation of how it's done. It's not all that unusual for us to try out our treatments on ourselves- it develops sympathy with the patient, and helps us to understand what they're going through and how best to help them through it.

Anyway, I'm happy to report that the staples do not, in fact, hurt very much at all- and my skin's a lot tighter than a cat's, and is therefore providing a lot more resistance to the staples than a cat's would. I stapled myself a few more times to get the "line" effect, since we usually use these things in groups. So far, most of the staples have actually worked their way through the skin, which they don't do on cats, but I'm going to keep them in for a couple nights so that I can experience sleeping with them in.

I'd been worried that I would have a lot of difficulty getting to sleep at night, since I usually rest my head on my arm when I sleep, and the staples are right there on my arm. But surprisingly, they didn't get in the way much. I laid awake for a little while worrying about how the staples were pushing through the skin, and whether it was an accurate experiment anymore, but once I stopped worrying about that I went right to sleep- and by the morning I'd almost forgotten about them until I saw them there on my arm.

So now I'm just going to see how it goes through the rest of the day, I'll spend one more night with them in and then have them removed tomorrow morning when I go back in to work. You have to have a special device to remove them, so if I'm going to have them out earlier I'd have to either drive an hour to my hospital, or check myself in to a random hospital in the area and explain to them how I stapled myself intentionally- which most people will probably think is rather odd.^_^'