These past few days I had to have a minor surgery on my right armpit because I'd been feeling a pricking sensation under my shoulder for a while. I swore it was a malignant nodule, an alien growing, or at the very least a government control chip implanted with the COVID vaccines. In my head, it had a life of its own.

So I went to the doctor, they did an ultrasound, and a few days later I went straight to the operating room. When the doctor cuts the skin… he pulls out a thorn.

Yes, a thorn.

The strangest thing is that I have no idea when it got there. It's been inside me for at least four years. Because I've been living a quiet life in Brazil for three years now, no countryside, no bushes, no Tarzan-style adventures. And before that, I lived in the city in Cuba.

The last time I touched a suspicious plant was when I was living at my in-laws' house in the countryside, about four years ago. So either it happened then… or I have no idea when it happened.

I ended up with three stitches.

But the story doesn't end there: On Tuesday, I got out of bed, put my right hand down, and bam! I pulled out a stitch. Off I went to the hospital again, like I was completing my medical visit album.

Luckily, everything was fine: they didn't have to stitch me up again, and the wound was perfect.

In short:

— I survived living for at least four years with a thorn lodged in my body. — I pulled out a stitch myself, hahahahaha. — And now I have an anecdote that even I can't believe.