Not in hospital. Quite.

My fun. Let me show you it.

Thanks for all your advices about my thumb, which I was busily taking to heart and working out whether the doctor or the walk-in centre or just a phone call would be best - when of course the thumb started feeling better, not hurting so much. (NB - this may have been something to do with the heroic doses of co-codamol and ibuprofen I was swallowing, but I didn't really believe that; I don't actually have much faith in the efficacy of medicines, for all that I swallow them in quantities.)

Anyway, I thought maybe I'd just wait and see, one more day, y'know? I have work to do...

So it's coming on late afternoon when the thumb really starts hurting again, and the rest of the hand is starting to chime in a little. But by then it's too late to interact with the medical professionals, because I have to read at a gig tonight; so I endure. Heroically, I like to think.

By the time I get to the Lit & Phil, I'm really not feeling well at all.

By the time I get out of the Lit & Phil two hours later, I am shivering and hurting and the pain has reached my wrist.

I go straight to the walk-in clinic, which sends me through to Casualty.

Eventually a cute young Casualty doc comes to have a look, and is rather more worried than I'd expected. I was of course thinking infection, antibiotics, like that. He was thinking infection inside the tendon sheath, where the blood supply is pathetic and it's bloody hard to treat; he was thinking admission, and intravenous antibiotic nuking, and a probable visit from the clever hand surgeons this very night.

But he spoke to the clever hand surgeons, and came back with a compromise; oral nuking tonight, and an appointment first thing tomorrow. And I am not thinking that clever hand surgeons didn't really want to turn out in a bitter midnight, oh no. I heart the NHS, and trust all its decisions implicitly, I do.

So. Nice nurse came to clean and nuke the wound, and I nearly passed out under her ministrations, came over all dizzy, I did, and they nearly kept me in regardless; but here I am, safe home. And more than a little hurty - they didn't give me any nucular painkillers, sob! - and I can't even have a hot bath on account of needing to keep my dressings dry, but I can at least type.

Until tomorrow, when they will doubtless cut off my thumb, these clever surgeons.

Which is pleasingly symmetrical, because the novel I have coming out in January starts with a boy losing his thumb. And his right thumb too, just like mine.

I am hopeful not to live out the rest of his story, thanks. Though I wouldn't mind his final relationship, I think that'd be interesting. Just, not the stuff in between, oh no...

PS

It's an old joke, I know, but they still do it.

I have a hand with literally no grip, where I can barely move the fingers to touch the keys here and that's it. And I told them I live alone, because they asked. And they sent me home with pills that might just possibly save my hand - and they put them under a childproof cap.

Ho ho ho.

Well, that was a night...

Daylight's good. It means you can get out of bed and go to hospital.

The hand's no worse, let's say that. On the other hand, I'm not actually sure it's any better. If it is, the difference is fractional.

Still: at least I can pack a bag this time. I can take Anathem. And the teddy bear.

If anyone wants me, I may well be in the RVI.