As if I didn’t have enough to worry about!

We love to be scared! Horror movies. Stephen King novels. Roller coasters. Bungy jumping. And that’s just the made up stuff. If the imaginary isn’t enough, we can fear the economy, wars around the world, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, twisters, even the presidential election—they’re always scary. The problem with all this is that I’m pretty sure that fear is cumulative and wears away at us till we cringe, whimpering in the corner.

Here’s the personal confession: I think I’ve reached the point, thanks to another “massively” frightening media story. You may have seen it: an article on msnbc.com about the risks of tiny strands of hair cutting off the circulation to baby toes, to the point that they might lose those toes. I can’t get the story out of my head, and I have begun checking my own toes morning and night for if one strand of hair can do it to an infant’s toe, perhaps 10 or 15 might do the same thing to my toe. You’ll be relieved to know that since I have been checking, I have not found one hair anywhere near any of my toes: but the risk is there (It always is!), and now that I know about it, I’m profoundly frightened. (I’m not even worried about the babies. How can I when I may be a risk!)

A few selected quotes from the article capture how terrible this situation really is:

As recently as this year, the Hong Kong Journal of Paediatrics reported the case of a 2 1/2-month-old girl whose right fourth toe was inexplicably blue and swollen — until doctors detected an errant hair and removed it.

If that’s not enough, there’s still more:

“You’ve got to have a persistent paranoid suspicion whenever you see something that doesn’t look right — like a blue or a red toe,” he says. “And you can’t let people blow you off. If your kid’s toe is blue there’s got to be a reason.”

I can do persistent paranoid suspicion thanks to all the fear that’s been accumulating in me.

The only saving fact here is that it is rare (but that doesn’t mean I won’t be the one be afflicted): “… doctors have documented dozens of reports of rare cases.” (I wonder if they’ve reported the not-rare cases.)

As I write this, cringing and whimpering in the corner from this final revealed burden, I almost don’t have the courage to think of and pray for my friends (and everyone affected) who wait, evacuated from their homes, waiting to hear if one of the fires along Colorado’s Front Range has destroyed their houses. But I will, and even from my corner of fear, my heart goes out to them.