Wednesday June 27th, 2023. As I sat reclined on the armchair in our room, heavily pregnant and swollen, I called my husband in. “Sagar, can you paint my toenails?”. Obviously, this request took my husband by surprise. We had just learned that morning that we would need to go to the hospital for a C-section (or an induction depending on what changed) the next morning because baby had decided in the 39th week to flip from head down to sideways. Here we were, under the stress of needing to suddenly make sure we were packed and ready to go within the next 12hrs (as opposed to another week)… but instead I was asking my husband late at night to paint.
It’s nail polish. Who cares? Well hidden under the surface of “it’s just nail polish” lay my deep dark reasoning as to why I wanted my nails painted. It’s a weird psychological dysfunction I suppose if you want to call it that.
As most of you know, I work in a hospital. Every time I go to a code (an emergent situation), after all the chaos has died down, there are a few things I’ll subconsciously notice about the patient. Whether the patient lives or not, the first point that always strikes me is that the patient is or was very very ill at this present stage (near death if not death). The second thing I often notice, only IF present (otherwise I don’t give it a second thought) is any sort of grooming that stands out. Hair color. Nails done.
In that moment, when I notice a manicure or a pedicure, I realize that this patient who in this moment is either gravely ill or… dead… very recently was in perfectly good enough health to go and get a mani-pedi!
That night, I remember thinking to myself that labor and delivery, while most of the time it goes well, it can also end in a number of different ways. I didn’t want to be a Negative Nancy, but I was also realistic given my experiences as a health care provider. In that moment I suddenly wanted all my nails painted “now” purely because if things didn’t work out for me… I wanted my providers to know that I wasn’t just a body or a ‘problem’ to be solved. That I was once a human too, a person who was well enough to paint her nails. And if I was going to go south… then I was going to make sure I went down well groomed.
Well thankfully, everything worked out for which I am eternally grateful. Obviously no one cares about whose nails are painted and whose are not when dealing with a medical situation. But my personal subconscious observations were enough to scar my psyche into doing what I felt needed to be done.
Painting them Red.
From a mind that spends a lot of time thinking... 