What to do.

Warning: graphic description of minor wound below.


My thumb is really rather sore.  I'm dosing up on ibuprofen a few times a day and making sure it's not going black/green/purple once a day so far.  It hurts all down the inside of my thumb, up into the knuckles at the base of my index and middle fingers and up the inside of my index finger.  Pressure on the back of the nail, or near the tip on the soft side, is a big no-no.  So I'm pretty much keeping it straight and not using it for anything.  Which means that many day-to-day tasks are annoying and fiddly, but it also means I have no grip in my left hand.  Which means that cycling will be tricky, never mind the fact that changing down on the chain ring uses a thumb operated trigger that's as stiff as all hell even with a fully functional thumb.  And gripping anything in the gym... also a problem.  I can't grip a bar or a handle with any meaningful strength, even pulling up my tracksuit bottoms is difficult!

So, if it's still not great tomorrow, I should probably take it down to the minor injuries clinic near work to see if there's anything can be done to help it heal more quickly.  When I was picking the seed out of the flap of skin on the soft side of my thumb, I did notice that it looks like the knife blade sliced through the thumb nail at the back at a quite shallow angle, through the skin and flesh on the tip of my thumb to just below where the nail and skin part at the tip of my thumb for about 2/3rds the width of my thumb.  The flap of skin glued itself with blood, up onto the inside of my nail so I had to peel it off the inside of my nail (after picking out the chilli seed with a needle) and push it back down to join the flesh where it should be before dressing the wound.  It bled an awful lot once I'd taken the pressure off the flap, so I'm pretty sure that if there was no nail covering it, I'd be looking at a few stitches for sure, but due to the nail you can't really see the damage very well and the rest of the nail, along with some tightly wrapped zinc oxide tape, is holding most of it in place.

Thumbs.  Quite important to most stuff we humans do, it turns out.

I think I need some more tea and Christmas cake.