Something Useful to Circulate on the Internet: Beware the Hair Tourniquet!

Nevermind that my purse is likely covered in social diseases, that my children could be skinned alive by Mr. Clean's Magic Eraser, or that there may be tarantulas in my bananas . . . Circulate this!

Beware the HAIR TOURNIQUET!

This medical condition occurs when a baby gets a single hair wrapped around her toe (or finger), and the toe swells up and turns a color that freaks out all mothers. Two weeks ago, this happened to my neighbor, Baby Jane.

When her parents couldn't get the hair off, they ran her up to the Insta-care. (It was Saturday.) After looking at the toe, the Dr. announced that he would need to cut the toe to get the hair out. That sounded drastic, so they decided to take Baby Jane up to Primary Children's Medical Center.

(If you've ever had a kid who needed serious, frightening, major surgery, you know that this is the medical version of Disneyland.)

Instead of the scalpel, the doctors at Primary's whipped out . . . are you ready for this? . . . a bottle of Nair® --seriously, NAIR! As in, "Who wears short shorts? . . . Nair for short shorts!" Remember that commercial from the 80s? Tammi calls this her $500 bottle of Nair. Treatment requirements: 5 minutes for hair to dissolve, 2 hours for the pediatric orthopedic surgeon to come verify that the hair is, in fact, dissolved. I thought this was important enough that I decided to post my first legitimate addition to a Wikipedia article. (I don't count the time I added to the Alfred Lord Tennyson Page: "And yet, Jonathan and David, still did not know who he was." It took a whole week for that to get deleted.) So, there you go. . . something new for the diaper bag. Get the word out!

[NOTE To the Snopes investigator who will certainly verify my story: My name is Sally Linford, and this really did happen to my real neighbor. She has 3 delightful children who play with my kids. I saw the toe myself.]