Chick Wit: Leave the doctoring to the doctors

I'm a big fan of empowerment, but there are some things better left to professionals.

Like surgery.

That's my lesson for today.

If a sharp object and your skin are involved, you really can't do it yourself.

In other words, don't lean in.

Sit down and pick up the phone.

We begin a few weeks ago, when I was in the throes of my deadline for my next book, working around the clock. I had reached an important plot point and was struggling with a few sentences.

Yes, that's my job. I wrangle verbs for a living.

Anyway, I got up from my computer and for some reason, my hair started to bother me, even though it was just lying there, minding its own business.

I decided I needed a haircut, and, of course, no place was open at midnight.

But I had to have a haircut, instantly. So I grabbed scissors and got busy.

This would be the Britney Spears School of Haircutting.

I wanted only an inch off, but you know where this is going. The left side looked shorter than the right, so I had to even it out, then the right side ended up shorter than the left, and I seesawed back and forth, evening it out, and by the end, my hair was cut all the way to my ears.

But I liked it, and I had thought of the right verb!

My hair looked a little crazy for awhile, but who cares? The world didn't end, and I felt empowered!

That good feeling carried me through my garden, which I put in in only three days in an empowerment frenzy. So you can understand why last night, having finished my haircut, my book, and my garden, I got into some trouble.

Idle hands are a woman's playground.

I stepped out of the shower and noticed that I had about 300 little red spots all over my chest and belly. I always knew I had them but I never knew I had so many, or maybe they had multiplied while I was in the shower, or since the last time I looked at myself naked, in 2008.

Anyway, I remembered my mother had them, too, and she used to call them cherries, but I was looking down at tons of cherries. In fact, my chest was a cherry orchard.

I started to be curious about the cherries, and I wondered what was inside them, so I took a safety pin and pricked the biggest one.

Predictably, it started to bleed.

A lot.

In fact, unpredictably, it bled for the next three hours.

I couldn't stop it. It was like a horror movie. It never clotted or stopped, and it didn't hurt, either. It just bled and bled. I bled through all the Band-Aids I had left, then several paper towels and two nice tank tops, so I looked like I was a gunshot victim.

The whole time, the dogs were going crazy, sniffing the air and hoping for fresh meat. Their life sucks since I turned vegetarian. They miss hamburgers and steaks. I'm pretty sure if I die in the house, they'll eat me.

But to stay on point, by midnight, I was wondering if I should go to the emergency room, but I was braless.

Also tired.

From loss of blood.

So I went to bed, praying.

Now I lay me down to bleed.

But happily, I woke up, and I had stopped bleeding, though I still have a bloody cotton ball stuck to my chest.

I refuse to take it off. It's like a cork, keeping the blood inside my body, where it belongs.

The doctor is out.