Turkey triage

One Thanksgiving, a few years ago, I sliced my finger on a piece of broken glass while cleaning dishes, requiring a late night trip to Mercy Regional Medical Center’s emergency room to put half of my pinky finger back on.

There, a doctor, making small talk while pumping an alarming amount of anesthesia into my finger, said every year people are admitted into the ER on Thanksgiving for … drumroll please … over-eating. As I waited several hours for the routine procedure of four stitches, and while my partner slept outside in the car with the heat on, I wondered, what is everyone else doing in here?

Luckily, we have the internet to explain such worldly mysteries. Of course, you have your exploding turkeys (never deep fry a frozen turkey) or people who suffer second-degree burns while cooking. Some doctors have even seen people who have dropped their turkey, slipped on the grease and hit their head. Ouch!

Then there are the carving catastrophes, prompting the crack medical recommendation: “Don’t carve under the influence.” Overin-dulging in food and drink, which we already covered, can cause an irregular heartbeat doctors call “holiday heart.” Not exactly a Hallmark card.

Some of the rest are gimmes: contaminated food or allergic reactions to Aunt Angela’s secret stuffing recipe. Some aren’t: crippling injuries from after-dinner family football games (one year, my dog tripped my sister, causing her to face plant, a legend we still bring up every year. Good dog, Hurley). And then there’s the family disputes after one too many glasses of whiskey and one too many comments from Uncle Dan about Democrats eating babies.

It’s also not uncommon for a man, wanting to give his woman the ultimate gift, to end up in ER after taking one too many, shall we say, performance-enhancing drugs. But because it’s a holiday, we’ll move on.

For the lucky few who survive the Thanksgiving feast, fitness experts with The Camp Transformation Center put together a weight-busting formula on how to indulge to your gut’s delight while not packing on pounds. For us, it serves more as a deterrent for grabbing seconds.

• If you want two slices of turkey with a spoonful of gravy, that’s 60 walking lunges.

• A ½ cup of mashers costs you 25 burpees.

• One cup of stuffing is 30 butterfly sit-ups.

Thanks a lot, Camp Transformation Center. Oh well, maybe we’ll take our chances over the holidays and resume burpee boot camp in the New Year. But we’ll definitely, definitely abstain from doing the dishes.