Thumbs up for nurses
One of my every day aims in life is to avoid DIY. Another is to avoid pain, but unfortunately, like the song Love and Marriage, "you can't have one without the other." This postulate was almost disproved last Sunday afternoon while doing a bit of DIY demolition - trying to knock down an old garden wall. After ten minutes bashing away, one of my aims - to avoid pain, was still on target, but then a second later, another of my aims with a mash hammer, wasn't.
The only positive outcome of this is that I have increased my vocabulary by one, as I now know why a mash hammer is so called. The definition of 'mash' in my dictionary is 'to compress with violence out of natural shape or condition' and would have described my left thumb exactly, if it weren't hidden by gallons of spurting blood.
The pain was so excruciatingly intense it rendered me speechless. It also (as my wife will bear witness) turned my normally ruddy complexion into what Mr Dulux would describe as a brilliant white matt finish.
I sat down; I got up again, walked around the garden, sat down, and then got up again in a constant loop. I couldn't think, speak, or explain any of my actions. Pain focuses the mind on pain and every action becomes an involuntary response. I was obviously in a state of shock, but didn't know it.
After what seemed like about an hour from the moment of impact, but in reality was only minutes, I was physically sick. I guess it must be one of the body's natural responses when in shock, to discharge the contents of its inner organs. Luckily, being sick brought me to my senses enough to get to the toilet before my number two organ sympathised with my stomach.
Eventually, I recovered enough to allow my wife to persuade me to go to the hospital. I thought no amount of pain could hurt more than I was experiencing until the nurse poured disinfectant over my thumb. It was like the mother of all pains being attacked by a swarm of angry hornets with sulphuric acid dipped stings. She said it was necessary to prevent infection, but at that point I couldn't have cared less if my thumb had dropped off.
I now know the meaning of and have real life experience of the phrase 'throbbing like a blind cobbler's thumb.' The difference being, the average blind cobbler's hammer weighs one pound and is wielded with just enough force to tap tacks into shoes. My mash hammer weighs four pounds and was wielded with all of my strength. It could be argued that pain cannot be multiplied by a factor of four, but anyone who is a member of the mashed thumb club will testify that it can, and any member who has also had the misfortune to consult Florence Dettol Nightingale will swear it can be multiplied by a thousand.
The old garden wall looks quite rustic now with all the bloodstains. I think I'll leave it as a feature.
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Ray man, you should never have taken that footballer strop and left the Welwyn, when they wouldn't give you a company house and car!! No pain there mate, just endless days of avoiding it. Just e.mail me, i've got a huge hammer and 2 fresh thumbs ;)