My hands were on FIRE

Many of you might already know that, but in case there is someone who doesn’t I wanted to pass along my experience. I made a spicy chicken soup yesterday AM around 9:30 and cut up several Habanera and Serrano peppers (fresh from the garden so maybe they were hotter than store bought?). I was busy getting all the ingredients into the pot so I didn’t wash my hands right away. I had NO idea at the time what a huge mistake this was. I could feel a little heat on my hands throughout the day, but it wasn’t until 9pm at night when I laid down that I felt like my hands were on fire. I didn’t know that the oils from the peppers could actually get into your skin and cause your hands to burn even though they look completely normal. At first I was thinking I must have burned myself from the steam, but that didn’t seem very logical. DH told me that it was probably the peppers. We googled remedies (milk, bleach, baking soda, sugar water, aloe, lotion, etc) and NONE of them worked. I ended up holding an icepack between my hands until 4:45am.

NOTE: wear gloves when working with hot peppers because you do NOT want to experience what I did.