whatever you do, WEAR GLOVES

jalapeno peppers and i have a rocky past. an errant swipe of the hand on my nose or eyes after handling them is a super bad idea. if anger was capsuled into a physical feeling, i imagine that's what a pepper burn would feel like.

i'm normally pretty cautious about jalapeno peppers. after being burned a few times, i've taken to wearing plastic produce bags over my hands to craft makeshift gloves while i cut them. it works pretty well.

the other night i was feeling arrogant around the peppers and started mincing two of them barehanded. i had a spoon and took out the seeds and membrane. all was fine until i moved onto mixing cookie dough when i realized that my entire left palm was aching and burning, along with selected parts of my left hand. 

ignoring the pain, i continued to mix and carefully measured out several teaspoons of vanilla extract. it wasn't until i thought to WASH MY HANDS that i realized that it was too late to wash off the spicy pepper oil. a quick google search told me that the capsaicin oil had likely already seeped below my skin and was there to stay and hang out.

my hand felt like it was on fire. not only did it burn like a sunburn, it ached like no other and my hand pulsated with increasing pain. 

i looked up some remedies, chief among them to soak your hand in bleach. bleach. that sounded like a really dangerous idea, but i was so desperate i almost tried it. i poured myself a bowl of soy milk and started soaking my hand in there, and that gave some relief, but after i removed my hand it started to hurt again. so i tried coating my hands with a baking soda cake, which people swore would soak up the oil. that didn't work. moving onto hydrocortisone, it flared up the problem even more. finally, exhausted and frustrated because i wanted to sleep, i soaked a paper towel in milk, wrapped it around my hand, put a plastic bag over the wrapped hand, and secured a rubber band around my wrist so that milk wouldn't drip out during the night.

the next morning j awoke and told me that i looked like the hand model from zoolander. i undid my wrap and though my hand looked and felt like it had been through the ringer, the aching burn was no longer there and i was so so happy.