Fingore

Who wants to hear a real-life horror story? Everyone? Everyone. Good.

Way back in November I picked up a tweezers the wrong way. No really. I failed to properly pick up a tweezers and I managed to impale my finger with them. The steel tweezers cracked on impact and splintered in to my finger. GOOD TIMES AMIRITE?!

At the time of the accident it seemed like it was a small thing. I thought I managed to clean out the very small puncture-wound in time, there was minimal swelling and joy of joys there was next-to-no bleeding. Happy days, right? Right?!

Umm…

About two days after the initial injury my finger had swollen to more than twice its usual size and I had no mobility. Worse still, the ache and stiffness seemed to be spreading down my hand and in to my thumb. I was… slow to react to the warning signs.

So it turns out I had a pretty nasty infection, and was suffering from something called flexor tenosynovitis (don’t Google it – the post-surgery photo is better than whatever Google will show you). Apparently, flexor tenosynovitis (gah, it even sounds ugly “flex-or te-no-sy-no-vi-tis“) is a pretty grim wee affliction. I ended up spending about a week in hospital on fluids after undergoing surgery to drain the infection. The surgery, by the way was a complete success! Oh, and here’s a fun aside: for as long as I can remember I’ve been deathly afraid of getting a general anaesthetic, but apparently the severe nature of the surgery completely ruled out just getting a local and not, you know, making my peace with death while lying on the slab.

After spending the week on IV fluids with the wonderful nurses at St. Vincent’s monitoring my wound and… blood? (they took so much blood… are they vampires?) I was cut loose and sent out in to the world with a doctor’s note saying that I was unfit for work, and a big old flipper on my hand. This was a double edged sword, suddenly here I was with all the free time I could ever hope for and with no obligations beyond collecting sick-notes and doing my physio on the horizon. On the other hand (heh, hand) suddenly I was in a situation where I couldn’t type. I couldn’t hold a pen. Hell I was struggling to turn the pages of a book. It was grim at best. It took about two weeks before I was clawing the skin off my face.

By mid-September I was able to type again, and I was able to catch up on some rewrites and some newer scripts that, thanks to some very understanding collaborators, weren’t cancelled before they got a chance at life. Mind you I still can’t grip a pen comfortably.

With luck I’ll continue to recover, and sooner than later I’ll have some real strength back in my hand, but for right now, I’m just happy to be typing and working on a couple of exciting new projects that I’ll tell you all about soon!

Keep reading and writing,

Hugo