This is how I feel when I eat anything labeled “spicy.”
This week, I realized why it’s important to wear gloves when preparing hot peppers. I have never experienced something like this in all my life. This Tuesday, the monthly food bank also gave out bags and bags of large jalapeño peppers. I decided to pickle mine. A thought crossed my mind about wearing gloves, but I shrugged it off. I’ve sliced up peppers before, so I thought this wouldn’t be an issue. But what I failed to realize was how many peppers I would be slicing and preparing for the jars that morning. Everything seemed fine for the 30 minutes after I finished; then I slowly noticed my hands tingling a bit, which continued to build until I realized something was definitely wrong. For the next 10 hours, my hands felt as though they were inside a pot of boiling water. The worst part was needing to go outside. The Texas heat and sun felt like my skin was being peeled away by hot knives. Wait, lava. It felt like lava. I tried everything to ease the pain and remove as much capsaicin oil that was soaked into my skin. Using isopropyl alcohol seemed to help the most, but mostly it was waiting out the effects. I kept my hands around an ice pack for the remainder of that day. The following day, my hands were much better, but they had bouts of hot flashes, with some pain returning on my palms. As of today, I’m back to normal and with an important lesson learned the hard way.
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