We had done the hard part of the job. The old and grumpy sofa had been maneuvered out of the living room, down the steps and through the front door. The sofa was on the drive and carrying it into the garage was all that was left. Sofa’s are soft, or so I thought, so I was wearing flip-flops, the sort of health and safety neglect I had got away with for years. I was lifting and shuffling backwards, my stronger partner pushing forwards, and the sofa shifted and landed on my big toe.
The immediate pain released a scream! Pain and more pain in such a small part of my body! I looked down, there was blood and more pain. My partner ran into the house for plasters. The world became hazy and I lay on the sofa on the drive, hoping none of the neighbours were around. Blood was dripping on the sulky sofa. We were the sofa’s second owner and a third now seemed unlikely.
Wrapping the toe gingerly with padding I got inside and my partner tentatively cleaned the toe so we could examine the damage. It was clear the toenail was giving up its grip of my flesh and an absorbent dressing was needed to stop the house looking like a staged massacre.
Together we cobbled together a dressing and bandage from our first aid kit. Within an hour the dressing was saturated and spots of blood bloomed on carpets where I had walked. It was time, after ten years, to get the spare first aid kit out!
Ten years ago, when I was still a worker, one of my roles was closing down an office in Birmingham. Every week for months and months, I caught the early train from Manchester to Birmingham and briskly walked the short distance to the abandoned office. Along with a colleague, I beavered away among the friendly ghosts of the dedicated staff who had worked there for decades.
The large and once busy office covered four floors, from clinics to the top office in the attic, through staff kitchens and waiting rooms. There was a lot of stuff and nothing glamorous about sorting it. Stuff was mostly either taken to other West Midlands sites, or carried by me back to sites in Greater Manchester. It was mostly tedious work and occasionally interesting. I was creative where I could be and persauded Birmingham’s library archive to take the boxes of 40 years of newsletters, meeting minutes and photographs, conserving a part of the city’s social history.
There was so much stuff it was hard to find a home for everything and some went into bins. The closure was a surprise and no one had known to stop ordering stationery and office supplies. Even after boxes of bin liners had been shared around other sites, more were uncovered and a pile of these bin liners came home with me, filled a kitchen drawer and lasted us eight years! We used the headed paper as scrap for almost as long.
I am not good at throwing things away and faced with the combined contents of three first aid kits, much of it out of date, I stuffed them in bags and carried them home. I filled a cardboard box labelled ‘spare first aid’ with eye dressings, triangular bandages, rolls of micropore, adhesive-free plasters and eye baths. I hesitated but eventually added this box to the pile moving with us seven years ago. ‘You never know’, I said, as I stashed the ‘spare first aid’ away in a cupboard in our new home.
You do never know and I was glad to have this ‘spare first aid’ on the day of the toe incident. On day one alone I used up four different dressings. Unbelievably there was no specific toe dressing but I found the eye dressings were good substitutes.
By the afternoon of that first day, with no sign of the bleeding easing, we visited the walk-in [hobble-in] clinic for some professional bandaging. The nurse pretended to be impressed with my creative use of an eye dressing, the bandage wound around my toe and ankle Roman-sandal style, but really you could tell this was a first.
The nurse showed us how to dress a big toe neatly and with that knowledge I used the contents of the ‘spare first aid’ box better. I was soon cutting absorbent square dressings expertly so that they fitted a big toe that I could get inside a shoe. Fortunately, all my shoes are roomy VivoBarefoot Shoes.
For at least three weeks the toe needed almost daily dressings to protect it and the contents of the box started to dwindle. I was keen to get out walking but I would return from exercise with fresh blood soaking through the dressing. In the evenings I soaked the toe in warm water with a drop of teatree oil and a pinch of salt to soften the old lingering nail and help it detach.
My big toe went bright purple and a few days after the incident my foot swelled and I spent hours with ice and elevation, willing the foot back to a normal size so that I could fit into shoes. Of course, even with dressings, the toe suffered everytime it got knocked on chairs and cupboard doors.
After three weeks the old nail came away and underneath was healed and slightly tough skin. I am hoping a new nail will grow eventually and I am happy there are still a few dressings in the ‘spare first aid’ box.
You don’t need photographs of my bruised and bloody toe, so I picked some interesting images from my collection.
