The medicine show.

[reddragdiva]

• Rocknerd: 40 Sad Portraits Of Closed Record Stores; Melbourne’s Arthouse to go out with a bang!

I have been having a most entertaining time attempting to type without using my right ring finger. Because it's got a nasty infection.

Wednesday night I was most unwell, feeling terribly cold and shivery. arkady was surprised my hands and feet were cold (I'm usually a human electric blanket) and I put the heating on "stun". Thursday morning my finger was horribly red and swollen at the end. Thursday afternoon I went to the doctor, who prescribed orbital penicillin bombardment (4×500mg/day) and said "if the red spreads, particularly if it goes down your finger, go to A&E." Friday morning at work the pus burst through the quick of the nail, oozing a particularly disgusting red-flecked yellow slime and giving blessed relief to the pressure. This continued as a slow drip through the day, while the throbbing pain left me pretty much unable to think coherently. By home time (5pm) I noticed a telltale tender red line down my finger, so called Arkady and said I'd be stopping by A&E.

A&E took the problem seriously (they have a thing about bacterial infections that don't seem to be responding to antibiotics) and I got seen quick-smart. I am apparently not diabetic, which is good. By then (7pm) the tender red line had gone down the back of my hand. The usual treatment for a finger infection sending out red lines is check in for an overnight stay and intravenous antibiotics.

However, the orbital penicillin was basically the right sort of dose, so they decided to stick to attempting to lance the infection. This involves pumping the finger full of local anaesthetic — really, it inflates like in a cartoon — waiting five minutes and then making slices in the swollen bit, leaving blood and pus to hopefully gush forth. It was fabulously industrial culture. Particularly the bit where the anaesthetic didn't actually work so well and I could feel my flesh being sliced with accompanying slicey pain and had to steel myself not to flinch and to apologise for yelling and reassure the doctor he had my full consent to do whatever would work.

Once the bleeding had stopped, a nurse put on some most efficient medical technology which she was explaining to a more junior nurse. I forget the names, but the first layer was an antiseptic sheet which moulds itself to the finger, the second layer was a sheet of similar stuff that wraps around and moulds itself to the first sheet and then you just put a quite clever and simple tubular bandage over that and it all holds together.

I go back on Sunday morning at 8am (when A&E should be about as quiet as it gets — I don't think there's any 6am-licensed clubs for violent yobs in the local area) for a followup. This morning my finger is much happier — slightly less swollen, and there's not a tender red line on my hand, just on the finger itself. So far so good.

One thing I did achieve at work was to upgrade my CrackBerry from OS 5 to OS 6. This is everything it's cracked up to be, and if you're a Crackhead then I recommend it wholeheartedly. You will need access to a PC running Windows natively — VirtualBox fails dismally, and I bodged it through with VMware, but making the USB work is sufficiently kludgey that I couldn't write up a how-to in good conscience. OS 6 is lovely and fixes the one bug in OS 5 that really annoyed me: FLAC playback skipping after the display dims.

In the hospital, I was most glad for a BlackBerry full of music and disposable free games. Particularly as I discovered I could switch the radio off, leaving it as a full-featured music player with games and wifi that WON'T BUG ME. RIM absolutely and spectacularly fucked up not pushing BlackBerry to the consumer years ago. This could have been the iPhone. Now it never will be, because RIM is run by insane incompetents. Hopefully they won't crater before my contract runs out, by which time there might be an Android phone I don't want to smash to pieces with a toffee hammer rather than use.

Comments

[frou-frou.livejournal.com]

re: finger - how awful. Did I miss something? What happened to cause such a thing?

I once had an infected finger. It wasn't as bad as yours but it was bad enough to get the WA Education Dept to change suppliers of bandages, after I was used as a human biology experiment and the "sterile" swab turned out to be pus-filled war bandages from some middle eastern conflict. Nice. That's what happens when you choose the cheapest tender.

[reddragdiva]

I have NO IDEA where it came from, and it could have been ANYTHING. I suspect small child poo or cat poo. WASH YOUR HANDS!

[valkyriekaren]

Must be something in the air or summat. I'm currently on antibiotics to treat an abscess in my armpit - like you, I have no idea what caused it. Doctor suggested a shaving cut but it's in a non-hairy area anyway.

[greylock]

I am off, tomorrow, to the WA Record Collector's Fair in Vic Park.
I haven't been for 10 years but I purchased oodles of stuff in 1997 (the last time I went, and I *carried* it down south with me.... that was hell).

Yep, the 40 Dead Record Stores is sad. It resonates with "Turn Back Time: High Street" which In watched during the week. I will be sad when Dada's closes.

[pvaneynd]

Reading this I was remembering Peter Watts adventures and hoping that it would have a happier ending.

I'm glad it did. Get well!

[reddragdiva]

I am unlikely to end up nicknamed "Lefty".

[damien_wise]

I got something like that happening with my finger as a kid. Maybe not quite as nasty as requiring a trip to Emergency (maybe my parents thought I was malingering?)...but when there's that much pain, swelling, pus, and a red line of infection snaking its way up your limb toward your heart, medical types tend to take things seriously!
They thought it might have been from a spider bite (do you get whitetails in your part of the UK?).
Take care of it, and don't be surprised it it needs bandages for days/ weeks. My skin went kinda strange and wouldn't heal properly / took for ever. Now that I look at it, the skin on that knuckle looks slightly different to the others, something like 30 years later.
Orbital bombardment sounds like the way to go!

[fluffymormegil]

Spider bites are pretty unusual in the UK; most British spiders are physically incapable of piercing human skin :-)

[arkady]

We don't have any poisonous spiders in the UK, and no spiders capable of inflicting a bite. I think it was likely a combination of a hangnail and not quite washing thoroughly enough after emptying Freda's potty or cleaning out the cat litter tray.

[redcountess]

Poor pooh :-/ Could it have been a spider bite? Hope it clears up soon!

[rosefox]

I'm very glad they took you seriously. That shit is no joke.

I was hoping for leeches, though.

[azurelunatic]

That's definitely an experience!

Just stopping by to reassure you that the spammer who can't tell the difference between a shoe and a handbag has been whacked.

[reddragdiva]

Now that's full club-with-a-spike-through-the-end customer service!