The Wart Which Wasn't | An iPhone Obsession Story

I had a mental breakdown. Well, maybe not by the clinical definition, but I kind of lost it. Monday morning I woke up, splashed my face with water, sat down at my makeup table and something odd caught my eye. It was my right pinky. Just on the inside, near the top knuckle, there was a bump. What was that bump? It certainly didn't hurt. It didn't itch. I hadn't been burned or bitten. Working in veterinary medicine, I'm always cautious about contractible diseases. I wash my hands like a mad-woman, and I never touch a questionable animal with bare hands if I can help it. Any time I see a dog with splotchy skin, my mind automatically goes to mange. I know you're probably laughing, but hear me out. I think it's safe to say I have somewhat of a fear of catching unusual zoonotic (or human) disease. So, when I looked down at my little right pinky, the first (and clearly most logical) issue that popped into my head was WART!!!!! I went into full blown panic mode. I immediately googled "at home wart cure" and poured clear fingernail polish on the bump. I allowed it to dry and then covered it with a bandaid. As soon as John woke up (remember, this was all happening ~6 am), I asked him to find the best wart therapy available on the Amazon marketplace. He did. I worried about spreading the wart all day long. I was so careful to keep that area of my finger covered. I knew the wart remover wouldn't be in my possession until Wednesday, so I pretty much kept the finger under wraps, only letting it breath to replace the bandaid. Monday can and went. Tuesday came and went. I did the same thing, both days. Then, Wednesday, my wart remover came! I was relieved to finally have a cure. I opened up the package and took out the little pamphlet. I began to read the instructions, because... you know, I do that. I have to be educated on how things work. No flying by the seat of my pants on this one!Specifically, I read that if you treat something that isn't a wart, it can permanently damage your skin. Well, this is surely a wart. I mean, what else would it be? So, I googled "wart on finger", clicked for images and jumped into an entirely disgusting rabbit hole. My bump doesn't look anything like any of these. Surely I just don't have a common wart. It's got to be something else. I googled and googled until I found what's called a "flat wart". The literature told me that these warts were generally spread by shaving, but I dismissed that. Flat warts were the only warts that I could see this little bump being. It wasn't rough looking. It was the same color as my skin. Ok. So this is definitely a flat wart. Wait. Is it? At this point, I am just entirely ticked off. It's 9 pm on a Wednesday evening, and I can't tell if I have a contagious growth on my pinky. Is it, or is it not? I made a you-know-what out of myself by completely freaking out. Teddy wanted to be on me, which only led to more anger. I was mad at John because he wouldn't tell me if he thought it definitely was or definitely wasn't a wart. I may or may not have said some things in my anger. Not my finest moment. Here I was, with a potentially contagious growth on my finger, and I couldn't get an answer, and I could get it treated (you know, due to the risk of permanent damage). I called my mom and dad, who basically told me I was crazy. I texted a photo (the one below) to my Mother-in-law asking if she thought it was a wart. She replied with, "I don't think so. Maybe a bug bite. Take some benadryl" (bless her... I needed more than benadryl). Obviously, these were not the answers I was looking for. I furiously started googling on my iPhone 6 Plus, "photos of flat wart on finger"... and then it hit me. I looked down at my hand--the left hand--which was browsing Google on my phone (because--duh--my right hand was contaminated) and there was my answer. It's a callus. The wart is a callus. It's a callus that formed on my right pinky because I bought a phone 2.5x too big for my small hands, and I have to rest it on a pinky-shelf. And because I'm a millennial and I'm blatantly addicted to my cellular device, said pinky was thoroughly worn by said monster iPhone 6 Plus. Clearly it's an iPhone obsession problem. I should probably get that in check.And there you have it. The biggest idiot of the week goes to me. You can't make this stuff up, friends. You just cannot.