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That's right, I'm far too old for this.
Not THIS, the gaming stuff, but THIS, this weird thing on my finger.
Let’s roll back a week and I’ll tell you all about it.
It all started with this innocent looking little dot on my finger that I first thought was a bit of a splinter or something. I decided to do that manly thing of digging it out with a needle.
So being all practical and manly I first sterilised the needle in question in the gas flame, first dropping it because it got too hot, re-sterilising it and then dropping it a second time when my wife made me jump by yelling at me for using one of her best needles. Best needles? Do women have a ‘for best’ of everything? I mean, taking a look around my office (which doubles as our dining room) I can see the best cutlery drawer, the best napkins and tablecloth drawer, the best placemats and coasters and the best glasses.
Her wardrobe is the same. There’s the best shoes, the best dress and the best blouse. She even has underwear that’s ‘for best’ for crying out loud! I can sort of understand best clothes for posh occasions but who’s going to see her underwear if she’s somewhere posh? I’ve been to a few black tie dinners before and even in these days of tightened security I’ve yet to encounter a strip search on entry to the restaurant.
But I digress. Having ruined her best needle beyond all hope of it ever showing itself in polite sewing circles again, I sterilised it for the third time and set about removing the splinter. Now, it’s worth noting that as manly as it may be to dig a splinter out of your finger in a mini-homage to Rambo stitching himself up in First Blood; you really do have to fight back the tears when you dig that needle in for the first time having forgotten to let it cool as you’ve now given yourself a needle thick third degree burn…
But once my vision had stopped blurring and my nose stopped running, I had a bit of a root around to discover that it wasn’t a splinter but a tiny, tiny blister. Now I know I play a lot of games and I’ve had WASD cramp before but never a blister. So I chalked it up to just being an odd thing and thought nothing of it.
Three days later the innocent little blister had now spawned a dozen other little blisters running down the side of my finger… and now they were itchy. I don’t just mean itchy along the lines of a light tickle, I mean itchy along the lines of scrub them with wire wool. This was major itchiness, Premier League itchy with a side order of scratch me. I suppose one good thing abut having a deep itch like this on your finger is that unlike a back itch that needs another a human being to relieve and make you go ‘Ahhhhh’, this finger itch is reachable all by myself, so I can bask in that ‘Ahhhhh’ moment whenever I fancied.
However, the missus wasn’t too impressed with the amount of rapid hand movements and ‘Ahhhh’ing going on without her involvement and ordered me off to the doctors to get it checked out. Me? I’d have left it until my Black and Decker sander’s motor had burned out or I was down to the bone but I had to confess, my finger was looking like it had been savaged by a pitbull terrier with razors for teeth… so off I trudged.
So the doctor has a look at this mangled lump of flesh and, after plenty of umming and ahhing and, rather maddeningly running his finger over the offending area to bring on a massive scratching bout, he declares I have eczema. Eczema? No, it can’t be. Eczema’s for kids. I’m too damn old to have gone all through life without so much as a rash and now, at the age of 30-something, I develop eczema? I looked at the pink lump on my left hand and wondered why it had chosen to regress… Maybe my hand has only just realised its hit 30 and is having a second childhood now?
I was obviously looking crestfallen so my GP decided to cheer me up with some good news. I haven’t gone a developed just any old eczema, I’ve gone and given myself a proper man’s eczema, something worthy to talk about down the pub (other than why I’m wearing my ‘for best’ socks). Apparently, this eczema, as they go, is the skin irritation version of Ebola. No, really. This stuff is so aggressive that when viewed under a microscope it’s carrying a bat and has ‘KILL’ tattooed on its knuckles.
It’ll romp all over me in the time it takes to nip to Homebase for more sanding sheets. It’ll run up my arm and drive me to distraction, forcing me to by a chainsaw and give my arm the Evil Dead treatment. If not stopped now, the whole of my body will end up looking like my finger (according to my wife, some parts already do) and I’ll be driven mad by the itching.
Now at this point I’m thinking that he’s going to zip on a quarantine suit, burn my clothes (probably with me still in them) and then air-bomb the village just to be sure but no, he taps away on his PC and sends me off out the door assuring me I’m about as infectious as tap water. My ego, faced with the knowledge I was carrying something so dreadful that the US government might want blood samples for their bio-weapons labs, was just a little dented by this fact but I rallied well, expecting to be told that lots of bed rest and a nurse in a short skirt with a propensity for dropping her pen would be required to cure me.
But no, all it needed was a cream. A cream? But you said I was going to lose my whole hand… followed by my arm and my head before this demon rash spread south and engulfed my important parts! How is a cream going to save me? You don’t see the medic in war films running up and rubbing in cream! Bruce Willis in Die Hard doesn’t stop in mid-gun battle to rub a bit of cream on his foot! Dustin Hoffman doesn’t save the town in Outbreak by dabbing a bit of lotion over everyone! Cream? Haven’t you got anything more… macho? Like a self-administered course of injections into my stomach or a procedure where I pare the flash from my finger with a bowie knife holding the tourniquet with my teeth?
No.
So I sulk off with my cream and do you know what? It’s working a treat. I’ve put the belt sander away and cancelled the order for the table saw. Of course, I don’t feel particularly hard rubbing a bit of lotion on my hands three times a day, so to compensate I tie a bandana around my head and hide in the garage eating pork ribs warmed over a small fire, pretending the National Guard are after me… Still, at least that bandana has finally given me a use for a tie I was saving ‘for best’….
Originally Posted by Dareos
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always seem to enjoy readin your little storys nick 
that sounds like alot of fun 
