#gotpricked

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TIFU by being a bad cactus owner

I am posting from my phone so sorry if it isn't formatted very well.

Also this happened yesterday but the ramifications were today.

I am currently taking a mini-break by staying in the family home in the countryside. In one of my many hours of boredom I decide to go sit in the conservatory, upon entering I notice my cactus from when I was younger looking a little pale.

Now it probably hasn't been watered in years so I thought to myself that it is probably dead, my own fault really. But how does one test to see if a cactus is dead or not? Well obviously the only way to do so is to flick it as hard as you can. And so in a moment of pure idiocy I flicked the cactus only to be greeted by a sharp pain in my finger.

Upon closer inspection I noticed a black splinter embedded in my nail. The cactus spine had gone though my nail and into my finger. Shit. Now it didn't hurt that much but I was still worried about it. So I tried to remove it using my trusty Swiss Army knife and soaking my fingernail in warm water. No luck there. So I decided that I would go to the local minor injuries clinic the next day.

Cue today. I drove to my local walk in centre and with much embarrassment explained to the nurse on reception how I flicked a cactus and now have a spine stuck in my nail. I was taken to a treatment room and sat in a chair. She scraped away at my nail with a scalpel blade to try expose the spine, as a student nurse watched. Still no luck.

The got an Emergency Nurse Practitioner to have a go. She was defiantly much tougher. She got a smaller blade but scraped away much more of the nail. Progress at least! As she progressed deeper into the nail I was getting a bit more pain and occasionally the spine would move causing quite a bit of pain.

Now I don't often get injured so this pain was some of the worst I have felt in my life and I noticed that my hand was starting to go numb. The next thing I knew I had an oxygen mask on, I was dizzy and there was a fan blowing in my face. Turns out I had passed out from the pain.

Now I came round slowly and I was helped onto the bed and left to recover for a bit before the nail scraping were to continue. Eventually after 10 more minutes the bugger was exposed. Unfortunately for me it was still in too deep for even splinter forceps to remove. So, they applied some magnesium sulfate and bandaged it up with instructions to return tomorrow. Lucky me.

TL:DR Flicked a cactus to test if it was alive, cactus spine got stuck in my nail, went to a minor injuries clinic to get it removed, passed out from pain.

Update time: Just left the minor injuries clinic with a less interesting outcome than I expected. A different set of nurses today. I was greeted with an invitation to lie down on the bed as they had heard about my incident yesterday. Brilliant. The student nurse was there again and at least and she remembered my name.

The Nurse practitioner took one look at it and squeezed my nail a few times. She can't see anything in it so sent me home with a strange dressing that will apparently bubble up and go all "gunky" and instructions to go to a walk in centre if I have any more issues.

Pictures to follow when I arrive back to my flat tomorrow and have access to my PC.

submitted 1 year ago* by calv12345x

https://redd.it/3ewhot