Sunday, August 21, 2016

Poisoned thumb

Whilst levering the nut out of a macadamia shell I must have trapped some nut meat beneath my right thumb nail.  The thumb became odd looking and painful.  Foolishly I went to the local chemist, showed the sales assistant my thumb and was talked into buying fungal treatment and told that it might take a week or more to work.
My thumb got worse,swelling and turning grey at the end.  The merest touch would make me shriek with pain and it throbbed in a tedious manner.  Paracetamol barely took the edge off the pain enough to let me sleep.
Fortunately I got an appointment with a doctor first thing on Monday morning.  Not my usual G.P. but by then I was contemplating cutting my thumb off, so a competent and empathetic doctor was a good choice.  She quickly diagnosed bacterial infection, removed some of the pus, bandaged me up and gave me prescriptions for pain relief and antibiotics.  Oh the relief!
I went back to the surgery every couple of days to have the wound drained and re bandaged (each nurse has a different technique to bandage a thumb).  It took more than two weeks to clear completely.  Just as well I was on annual leave, visiting the doctor so often takes time.
Lessons learnt:  Roast macadamias, the nut just falls out of the shell when cracked.
                          Don't muck around with infections, they are most likely to be bacterial                                                   Look after my thumbs, it is difficult to do ANYTHING when the right thumb is out of action,oppose-able thumbs make us independent humans.
                          Zombies walk around, grey skinned and with arms outstretched and moaning because they are in great pain.

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