Dearest Flippy,

Hope you’re well — I’m sure not. I was fiending for a warm dinner tonight rather than the usual clammy, shameful handfuls of Frosted Mini-Wheats. Alas, despite having a healthy amount of fear for the four-and-a-half minutes microwaved Cheese Ravioli Lean Cuisine, I burned my finger on the Lean Cuisine steam. I’d go so far as to say that my meal bit the hand that eats. Still, silliness aside, I fear for the safety of my person, and the pain is practically unbearable. Should I amputate? Steam is hotter than boiling water, after all: who knows what kind of damage I sustained…

Concernedly,

Augurial Amputee

A.A.,

Wow, what a story. Nothing makes me sadder and more prepared to give advice than the image of a wounded warrior returning from the battlefield, especially one of their own creation. 

Let me give it to you straight: if you don’t take a steak knife to that digit the moment you read this, it might already be too late. Hell, if you’re reading this, it’s too late. The steam has already penetrated your epidermis and now rides the waves of your major arteries, worming its way toward your heart. As it passes through your superior vena cava and enters the right atrium, a sudden, rapid expansion of heat will cook you faster than you can cry “the radiation risk of a modern microwave is not nearly as dangerous as the temperature to which it elevates its contents.” Through amputation, you may manage to vent the steam in time, but I wouldn’t hold out hope.

Dejectedly, and penning your obituary, 

Flippy