"Riding Giants" v. strange, full of jaw dropping moments of stunning cluelessness, colonialist weirdness, bad metaphors, wondering why the fuck, and yet fascinating, the knowledge in my body what its like to rush down a wave or the uncertainty before you take it or pull back or knowing you're going to wipe out and can't do anything about it, just get as much control as you can & point forward before you crash down with the wave on top. So though I ride a 5 or 6 foot wave the videos make my body have intense memories as I see these people on 50 foot waves.
A good day today, moments of exhaustion, but I laid down & then was fine again for a while. Gina came over and we hot tubbed. Moomin took to her amazingly. He explained Captain Underpants to her a bit.
Tonight has been bad with white-hot stabs in the base of my spine so that in the middle of sentences I can't really talk anymore and have to wrench my mind back to words. So that means crutches tonight. I avoided taking any pain drugs.
In the middle of all this I had an infection of some kind in my finger. It looks to be something right at the edge of my fingernail but it made the whole fingertip swell up. It kept getting bigger and bigger. Finally last night it got to where I couldn't ignore the pain of typing. So I alternated reading, typing, surfing some blogs, and ice pack on finger. I have an amazing capacity to ignore that sort of thing. This morning finally pus started oozing out from the edge of my fingernail while I was smearing antibiotic ointment on it. And then more and more kept coming out. It was incredibly disgusting! I squeezed a bunch out though I know that's the wrong thing to do, but it was such a relief to have it less swollen.
Really? The wrong thing to do? I had a finger edge infected a couple months ago, and the only thing that seemed to relieve it was when I figured out that by pulling the edge back a bit the pus could get away. Carrying the badness with it! I mean, you don't need more pain in your life. Do you have a Batman (or other similarly spiffy) bandaid to put on it? The cushioning/hydrating aspects of a bandaid actually did seem to help me. Also the Batman aspects.
A person needs to be able to type.
Oh, and did I say yay on the MRI and knowing? Yay!
Posted by: Madeline F | April 28, 2007 at 02:54 AM
Yeah the bandaid is crucial for insulation both ways. I would not want for any gross pustulent germs to get on anything...
In theory it is the wrong thing to do because squeezing might force infected junk the other way too into uninjured parts of the finger. Right? Like why it's bad to squeeze zits.
Man I love the internet.
Posted by: badgerbag | April 28, 2007 at 09:56 AM
I wish someone would explain Captain Underpants to me.
Posted by: WhatLadder | April 28, 2007 at 11:27 AM
I've squeezed a lot of infected things and only had bad results once- but the Dr did put me on insanely strong antibiotics at that point so you would think I would have learned my lesson.
However, I do know that ice is the wrong thing for an infection. Soaking it in warm/hot as you can stand it water is what is needed. The hot water will cause the infection to come to a head faster and then you will get the relief of pressure as it disappears back into your finger or comes out. Either way it is all good. Hate to say it but the ice made you suffer longer. Poor baby.
Posted by: Heather | April 30, 2007 at 12:06 AM