Busyknitter

Ouch! This week I learned a fairly brutal lesson about the fragility of good health and that it only takes one little thing to seriously get in the way of normal life.

Gentle reader, if you are in the least bit squeamish, go no further.

While we were out at the Singing Ringing Tree last Sunday, I noticed that the middle finger of my right hand was a little sore. On inspection the area around the nail proved to be red and swollen. By Monday evening it was throbbing so menacingly that I took myself off to A&E and was prescribed a routine dose of antibiotics.

That stopped it getting any worse, but it didn’t get any better either.

On Wednesday evening I accidentally knocked the finger on my way upstairs. It was agony for 30 minutes and throbbed enough to keep me awake for another 90. The skin around the nail was also bright green. Enough was enough, so back to A&E I went on Thursday morning for the moment I had been dreading for 4 days. I can honestly say you haven’t lived until you’ve had local anesthetic injected into your finger (took about 5 shots to numb me up properly), a scalpel slice into the bony area under the finger nail and a burly doctor force the pus out. Lovely.

Worse was yet to come. When the dressing was removed by the nurse at work on Friday it was still oozing green stuff and I was dispatched summarily to my GP to be prescribed more and stronger antibiotics; the kind that you can’t drink with and which make you feel queasy all the time.

Today (Sunday) is the first day that the finger has started to feel remotely normal. But up till today I have:
-Not been able to write
-Not been able to type with my right hand
-Consequently (also because I’ve spent half the working week in A&E and at the GP’s) missed a major deadline at work, have had to beg the indulgance of the entire Finance Committee and risked giving a poor impression to the new Principal who starts work tomorrow
-Not been able to go swimming
-Not been able to wash up (yaaay, you might think - but not if your husband is away from home for a long-planned jolly)
-been scared witless of a T smearing incident and me having to clean it up with my dodgy hand

All because of one sodding finger nail.