'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door

[desperance]

I sit here fresh from the bath, and swathed in a soft black towel. Ordinarily I'm a bathrobe man, but tonight there are special circumstances: viz I'm bleeding from the shoulder, and I wouldn't want to get blood on any of the robes.

Actually, I'm quite glad to be bleeding; I was starting to worry. This is just residue from my curious fall of a few days back; I barked & bruised myself all over, blacked my eye and broke my glasses, all that sort of thing, but I also skinned my shoulder and the knuckle of my thumb. Nothing, just grazes - only those grazes have been the harm that didn't heal, that got more sore by the day and looked kind of pusy in the middle and streaked redly outward. I've read enough novels to know that this is Bad, that Infection has Taken Hold, that untreated I am now Like To Die (you can tell the kind of novels I've been reading - and, hell, writing. When I want to worry a character, as often as not there's red streaks coming from an infected wound). So, this last twenty-four hours, I not only look like a refugee from a childhood playground scuffle, I smell like one too; I am a child of my time, and I dug out the TCP.

And after some vigorous daubing and much stinging, I am happy to say that the wound in my shoulder is now running with good red blood, which - if I am to believe what I read - is a vast improvement and it should now Heal Cleanly. If anything's going to kill me, it's the wee little puncture in my thumb. Which would be ironic, and therefore mandatory in the kind of novels that I read. And, yes, write.

But meanwhile - not wanting blood on the sheets - I can't go to bed till I'm solidly scabbed over; so I guess I get to do another hour's work. Joy, joy. I have unwritten five thousand words today already, and it's exhausting. Wish I'd written the damn thing better in the first place, y'know? Or even just shorter, shorter would be good...

Comments

[xnamkrad.livejournal.com]

You do need to be careful with these (but be careful to avoid paranoia). A few years ago, I got a blister on my hand working in the garden, and the blister burst during the day. It got a bit sore, but I thought nothing of it. About a week later, I got an emergency call into work (computer bureau at that time) and when I had the problem sorted it was about 4:30 am so I decided to do some more work in the office and go home mid-morning. So while typing up some stuff, I noticed that the knuckles had disappeared as my hand was swelling. Cue phone call to Doctor. Upshot was it took nearly two years to fully get rid of it, ended up in hospital for a week, avoided major surgery - twice - by the skin of my teeth. And the slightest cut or bump would trigger it all again.
And that was with antibiotics.
So like I said, take care, and if in doubt, get it checked.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Will do. And thank you. I can avoid paranoia, but largely by lapsing into heedlessness; a word to the wise is always welcome. In all honesty, I was operating on the assumption that what with Modern Medicine and all, those days were behind us. Sheesh...

[xnamkrad.livejournal.com]

When I was checked in the hospital (where they drained the infection) they were checking red lines on my lower arm. They faded in a few days, but I found out these were a sign of the infecttion, and had they reached the top of the arm (and hence the lymph node there) I would have been facing several months (sic) in hospital, including a long time in intensive care. Lucky it was spotted in time.