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Here’s a pointless little bit of trivia: On Sunday I got my wedding ring cut off my finger.

I’ve recently started waking up in the middle of the night with panic attacks. They were being caused by a sudden and irrational fear that my ring was cutting my finger off because I could no longer get it past my knuckle. I kept having images of trees growing into and around things like tires or old cars and imagining my finger doing that around my ring. It didn’t matter that I could still rotate the ring relatively easily or that it was more loose when I was cold, etc. Panic attacks are not logical - doubly so in the middle of the night.

By Sunday I had had enough, but I could not get it off - no matter how hard I pulled and how much it hurt while pulling. I tried holding my hand above my head to drain the blood, using ice water to shrink my fingers, and using Windex (which is surprisingly slippery) to help slide it off. Melody even tried pulling on it with both hands. Nothing worked. In fact, after looking at it closely and measuring the width of my knuckle as compared to the inner diameter of the ring, I became convinced it wasn’t physically possible to remove it. (Sure, I’ve gained weight since we got married - but apparently my knuckle bone somehow got larger as well, which seems odd.)

After failing to remove the ring, my finger started to swell up from the abuse. I had to fight mild panic as it kept growing, changing color, and I stopped being able to rotate the ring itself. We left as soon as we could for the jeweler so they could cut it off.

It was such a relief to get it removed. Odd, though, because I kept feeling as if it was there. The skin under the ring was all destroyed and broken and my entire finger looked very deformed. It’s all cosmetic, though. It’s been two days, and while the skin that was under the ring still hurts a bit and needs to heal, the general shape of my finger is seemingly returning to normal. It’ll be about 2 weeks until I get the ring back, so that should be plenty of time for everything to settle down. (The ring will be a full size larger, too.)