Paronychia

Eeeewww!

One of my fingers started turning green, somewhere around the nail bed.

I think I burnt the finger while twisting spark-plugs out of a very warm engine. So there was a small spot of cooked tissue under the skin. After a few days, it became inflammed, but that always heals, no problem.

But when I started seeing a tinge of green under the skin... hmm.....

Lucky I've got a few medical supplies sitting around the house. Broke open a sterile needle, sterilised it just in case, since the needle expired 3yrs ago, and I lanced the green spot.

There was a fair amount of pus, oozing out like squeezing a pimple. The pus looked like green phlegm, and there was significantly more of it than I thought could fit in the tiny space under the skin. Squeezed out as much as I could. It hurt a lot less than popping a stubborn pimple.

Didn't have any convenient anti-septic in the house, other than a bar of Dettol soap. So I microwaved a mug of hot water, dissolved a half handful of salt into it, and soaked the finger in it for about an hour.

I don't know how effective that was. But I'm not man enough to cauterize my wound with gunpowder, nor burning pitch, nor red iron. Salt water is a harsh environment and it kills stuff. Nothing lives in the Dead Sea. That's as far as my rationale went, and it made me feel better about the wound. Or I could get a stiff brush and scrubbed the wound until I reach clean tissue, but unsurprisingly, I favoured the salt water approach better.

The finger looks much healthier this morning.

But maybe the ill effects weren't completely purged... It's entirely possible that some disease inspired dementia told me that this would be an interesting subject matter to share with my friends.

Well, I'm accustomed to writing about weird stuff. Be glad that you've not read my gleeful account of the sounds of snapping human ribs with a large pair of pliers, or hacksawing a female jaw-bone. But I'm pretty sure I've not told anyone about the horror porn I've seen either. The real horrors are the one where the inept performer spent 40minutes stitching up an episiotomy.


PS. Isn't Google just wonderful for digging up inappropriate links?