BehindTheMedspeak: Dr. Robert E. Grover, world's best endodontist, performs surgery — on my finger

Who knew that the Ruler of the Root Canal could so effectively, on short — actually zero — notice, step outside the oral cavity and do an emergency procedure on my left little finger?

Above and below you will see before-during-and-after photos of a delicate splinter removal performed 24 hours ago in Dr. Grover's office.

On Tuesday I'd been cleaning windows in my kitchen when I rammed the outer side of my left hand into an old wooden frame, in the process driving my left little finger up and into the wood.

That hurt big-time.

When I looked, I saw what you see in the photo up top, but with more fingernail.

I couldn't begin to try to extract the splinters because they were entirely under the nail, so I got a nail clipper and removed as much as I could without it hurting too much.

That exposed the tips of the splinters but no way could my Tweezerman tweezers begin to get a grip on them: simply not precise enough.

I prepared for kitchen table surgery, getting out a magnifying glass, needles and a flashlight, but then I remembered I had an appointment scheduled for 2 p.m. Wednesday to follow up some work Dr. Grover's been doing on various and sundry teeth, so I figured maybe he'd have a look with the high-powered microscope and camera and ultra-precise and fine tools he uses in his day-to-day explorations of some very tiny spaces, namely tooth roots and their nerve and vascular canals.

Sure enough, he was willing and ready to have a go and so I sat in the chair and closed my eyes (it's a habit I've had in dental offices since my days as a youthful patient during the days of "Tender Touch," our nickname for Dr. Jack Teplin).

I held up my left hand and Dr. Grover had a look, at first remarking there were two separate splinters, one larger than the other, and then in the course of removing each one finding more, such that he extracted a total of four substantial splinters, each about a quarter-inch-long (see final photo) — one entering diagonally across the nailbed, with two hidden behind the two most superficial — along with a smaller spicule, which had already begun to encyst.

The whole procedure start to finish took about ten minutes, and hurt a lot less than what I'd been planning to do myself Tuesday.

And there's no way I'd have been able to get the two deeper pieces out along with the spicule, so I'd have had to just hope the nailbed didn't get seriously infected.

At the time I went to see Dr. Grover the fingertip was a little swollen, painful and red, and as I compose this post (10:46 p.m. Wednesday evening) it's a whole lot less of each.

Kudos to Dr. Grover, is what I have to say.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: on my way home from Dr. Grover's I decided to stop by Giant and get some small Band-Aids to cushion and protect the surgical site.

I couldn't find the little ones about a quarter-inch wide that I recall using during the 20th century but patient item-by-item inspection of the Band-Aid section revealed a bespoke fingertip version (below).

I bought a box and they work great, the little butterfly flaps folding neatly alongside the fingertip to secure the pad over the distal impact point.

Highly recommended — just named the Official Post-Nailbed Surgery Fingertip Band-Aid of bookofjoe.

No small beer, that.