I don’t know how many times I have cut myself, but I realize now that in all those time I have not marveled enough about my skin’s ability to heal. Until last weekend when it didn’t.
Last weekend I have a few scratches on my hands from pruning the overenthusiastic bougainvillea that brightens up our back corner. They weren’t anything serious but I came in from the garden and soaked my hands in Dettol, smeared on some Savlon and trusted the rest to my immune system. The scratches scabbed over and all was well.
Except on Saturday night the scratch on my thumb started to really hurt, then it started to throb and look a bit nasty. On Sunday Soy and I made jokes about my thumb having a life of its own. I was a little dismayed by how much it hurt, but it’s a little scratch and my skin will heal quickly, I thought.
Sunday night the joint in my thumb started to ache and grow hot and I knew I needed to see a doctor. All the late night GPs were shut, so I headed over to RPA hospital to enjoy the ambience of late night A&E. I have to say, I felt a little foolish because I thought this was a problem that could be dealt with by a GP, a hospital seemed like overkill. The doctors and nurses at RPA didn’t share that view, especially when they pulled up my sleeve and saw the pink line tracing up my arm, showing how far the infection had spread.
They pumped me full of antibiotics via IV drip, cleaned up the wound (now 3 times the size of my other thumb) and sent me home with a script for oral penicillin. They had mentioned scary things about infections in bones and tendons, confirming that it was entirely appropriate to come to Emergency with an infection like that.
Today my thumb is back to normal size, my skin is normal colour and I am tempted to revert to my old view that it was really a lot of fuss over nothing. But 100 years ago, before Howard Florey experimented with using penicillin on human infections, that infection would have raged on and done who-knows-how-much damage to my hand and, possibly, my life. How lucky I am to live in this age of modern medicine and this country with a free health system.
I had a similar experience when Scratchy bit my thumb (while I was, funnily enough, trying to give him antibiotics!). Like you, I initially thought a trip to the doctor's was overkill. When I eventually showed up at the GP, she scared me half to death with tales of how germ-ridden cat bites are and talk of infections "reaching the bone" and requiring hospitalisation. A while later I read about an author in Perth dying of complications from an infected cat bite. Being on chemo was incredibly stressful, in large part because of the knowledge that antibiotics might not be enough to save me in a situation like this. I wish you a long life filled with truckloads of tough white blood cells and spot-on modern meds whenever called for!!
Posted by: Liz | May 31, 2012 at 09:57 PM
I have a dear friend whose husband caught an extremely rare flesh eating bacteria. Within 12 hours it went from a scratch, to him dying on the table in I.C. and being resuscitated. Even though he made it, his organs are never really going to recover, and he has permanent brain damage from "dying" (because his brain lost Oxygen).
Antibiotics are amazing! My Mum is a retired Microbiologist, and she gets very angry with the amount of products that are on our supermarket shelves that contain antibacterials. These products just promote the situation where bugs start to become immune to the antibiotics that we currently have.
I had my own brush with death requiring massive doses of antibiotics last year. I had an appendix that ruptured while I was waiting on surgery. It took me quite some time to get over the fact that it really was a brush with death. I would have died a slow, painful death, if I had not had access to the level of medical intervention that we tend to take for granted in a first world country.
I am so glad your story, like mine, had a happy ending.
Posted by: Claire - Matching Pegs | May 31, 2012 at 02:44 PM
Oh, I hear you. I have had cellulitis in my foot twice now, most recently just before Christmas, and I ended up having to have out-patient hospital treatment for 3 days in St Vincent's (I will see your RPA Saturday night ambience and raise you a Vinnie's). My latest episode came from a small blister - possibly athlete's foot - between my toes and a bug getting in. I had an outline of the red patch traced on my foot with instructions to come if it moved outside of the lines. Of course the kids were ghoulishly fascinated.
So, yay, penicillin.
Posted by: jano | May 31, 2012 at 01:17 PM