Yesterday I arrived home from class and began making myself a Family Size box of Annie’s mac ‘n cheese to eat alone in my bed. Tragically, as I cut into a firm stick of salted butter to add to my cheese sauce, I nicked myself with my knife and cut my finger. I instinctually headed for my pantry, and began sifting through assorted bottles of vitamins, spices, and condiments, all haphazardly mixed together in the same cabinet for ease of use. Finally, my eyes fell upon it, a small jar of opaque cream. I opened the jar and begin slathering my open wound with the thick gel to prevent the cut from becoming infected. I covered my finger with a band-aid and returned to my nightly activities.
At around 2am I awoke in a cold sweat. I accidentally put cream of tartar on my cut instead of Neosporin. I tried not to panic as I hustled to the bathroom to check out the damage. As I rinsed off my greasy hand I noticed that the edges of the cut were slightly pink and puffed. No worries. I was sure it was just simple irritation. From the fact that I covered my wound in cream of tartar, and not, as I had presumed, Neosporin.
The next day I awoke to find my entire finger stiff and numb. A thin layer of pus had congealed around my mac ‘n cheese cut, and my heart began to race as I realized that the gravity of my cream of tartar error was perhaps much larger than I had originally thought. I furiously googled “epileptic shock due to cream of tartar,” which yielded no fruitful search results. I thus resigned myself to doing the only reasonable thing I could think of. Sped myself to the emergency room and sat in front of a nurse crying as I explained to her my situation, certain that death was soon to come.
As it turns out, the severity of the cut was due to the fact my butter knife was rusty. Cream of tartar is actually quite mundane. I Accidentally put cream of tartar on my cut instead of neosporin and that is what happened.
Photo Credit: Allrecipes.org