"The hangnail" Topic

I am a weenie when it comes to pain. But when I was a kid the "emergency room" meant life threatening stuff, not going for a hangnail. Once I slipped on a ditch embankment and fell with my bare knee on a slab of jagged concrete: it pulped my knee open almost to the bone and took all summer to heal over: the scar tissue still remains slightly insensitive to touch over forty years later.

My 15 year-old daughter bit off a hangnail Sunday and got too close to the skin; her little thumbie swelled a tad and she complained. I offered that sucking on it and alternately rubbing in some aloe vera jelly would put her right. This morning on the way to early school, she shows me her wound: now swollen and red and painful looking. It turns out that she poked at it last night with a safety pin, after working in the dirt in the garden for an hour.

"You didn't soak the pin in alcohol first?" I asked incredulously.

"No, why should I?"

"First of all," I explained, "you use a needle, not a pin, because the needle has a sharper, more acute point for opening up swelling and letting the puss out; second, you always sterilize anything that's going to poke into your body, that's just a given." (In her 15 years, she's been told that more than once.)

"Take me to a doctor," she insisted.

I refused, and told her about my knee injury story.

"But you SAID that if it got worse you'd take me to a doctor," she insisted further.

"That's not what I meant," I explained impatiently (she'd gotten me up to play taxi driver a whole hour earlier than I usually arise): "I meant if it swelled up and made your hand fat and looked like blood poisoning, THEN I'd take you to a doctor. They won't do anything except dab at it, put on a bandaid and give you a pain reliever."

She started to tear up and get annoyed at having a do-nothing for a father. "You're not a doctor. You don't anything about this."

That's when I lost my temper and punched the ceiling over my head in the van and used the "F" word incorrectly. "They charge five hundred bucks just to look at you!" I practically screamed. Bad choice of words: now she thinks money is more important than she is.

Why do kids these days think that a little redness and mild, local pain means that the emergency room is the only answer? I never went to a doctor in my life except when I broke the steering wheel in my Dad's Chevy with my face and my own teeth cut through my mouth. A hangnail? Give me a freaking break!

(Maybe we need an "Adventures with Children" board -- just kidding!)

Why do kids these days think that a little redness and mild, local pain means that the emergency room is the only answer?

For the same reason someone calls 9-1-1 when the fast-food restaurant forgot to put pickles on their burger.

The *only* good thing about health care around here (it sure ain't the hospital!) is an acute care clinic that will basically screen all the non-emergency room stuff that usually winds up in an emergency room, for the same $20 USD co-pay as a doctor's office visit. Open 24 hours, perfect for that sort of thing. Staffed by PAs, mostly; the doctor who owns it won't even use his surname in advertising (as people might not go if he sounded like he was some tribesman from the Caucasus), so it just goes by "Dr. Mike's Clinic".

I was once introduced to a friend of a friend, sort of as a set up to see if we'd be interested in dating.

"Will I like this girl?" I asked my friend.

"Well, you know how sometimes you get a hangnail, and when you rip it off it hurts, but you kinda like it?"

"Um… yeah."

"Good – you'll like her".

I did like her, kinda, but it hurt.

-Alex

Around here, socialized medicine takes care of the cost of the emergency room; the 2-3 hour wait if you are not actually at risk of death generally takes care of the whiners.

Doug Larsen – Only one question for you. Has your Daughter had a Tetanus shot in the last 5 years? If not, you might want to rethink the doctor visit.

Especially if she was poking her finger with a un-sterilized pin. By the way the idea of always using a needle is that you never know what a pin as been made out of. The pin could be made of a nice lead mercury alloy.

I'm obviously a mean parent. A week or so ago my 6 year old daughter came up and showed me where she had scraped a knee falling off her bike. Before I could say anything she told me "I know, I need to Just Deal With It" which is my typical answer to anything less than broken bones or stitch worthy gashes.

Jake

My typical responce is "No Blood? No Concussion? You're good to go."

"Bandaids and Neosporin are in the bathroom, go forth and heal thyself."

"And get off the lawn."

@Doug – Kids think everything needs a doctors visit because so many mothers drag them in for the slightest injury/discomfort. Growing up in the dark ages, my siblings and I had 15 mile drive to the subsidized company doctor (no insurance) and the seven of us were in to the doctor perhaps a dozen times each growing up. Amazingly, we all survived with only minor scars. Doctors were for more serious injuries. Of course, when we were young, people who went to hospitals often died (treatments were not as advanced for cancer, etc.), so having to go to one was regarded as more of a last resort.

On the other hand, my nieces and nephew are too young to need a doctor for every scrape or bruise – band-aids are the magic cure for everything. The more the better, especially the ones with pictures on them.

"Bandaids and Neosporin are in the bathroom, go forth and heal thyself."

Not for me. I am alergic to neosporin, and all its relatives…
Latex adhesive, too, I think.

Open the wound with an X-acto knife and pair of tweezers, squeeze as much pus out as possible, soak the finger in alcohol for an hour, then pack salt into the wound and bandage it. Good as new.

I agree with Eclectic Wave. If nothing else, the booster might hurt enough she'll rethink this "I need a doctor" for every minor injury.

Magnesium sulphate paste is your friend. Spread liberaly over area and bandage with gauze and tape.

I know this as I went to our local casualty dept. recently with the same. In the UK we have the National Health so it's free at least.

I left the finger for 4 days during which time it got worse and the ache and pain from constantly knocking it was making me grumpy at home.

I profusely apologised to the nurse. Surprisingly she said I was wise to come in as patently the infection was spreading and that once it got past the finger it would have been quite serious.

She spread the Magnesium sulphate on it and told me to return in 24hrs.

Sure enough by then the paste drew the infection to the surface and she took great glee in lancing it with an audience of other nurses. Apparently they love that part of their job, it's like squeezing a spot :D

"Open the wound with an X-acto knife and pair of tweezers, squeeze as much pus out as possible, soak the finger in alcohol for an hour, then pack salt into the wound and bandage it. Good as new."

On a teenage girl? Good luck with that then :)

Use the paste and bandage, lance in 24hrs. Repeat as required.

Steve P

Last time I cut myself open with a craft knife seriously I got my housemate to hold the wound together (it was 3/4 inch long), sprayed hell out of it with Savlon antiseptic spray and bandaided it shut.

A protective bolster of surgical tape, tissue and gaffer tape to avoid me knocking it on anything and I was right as rain.

The tetanus shot might be an idea though, I can't have a booster these days as I had all my injections when living abroad and the doctor is worried about giving me any more.

Why do kids these days think that a little redness and mild, local pain means that the emergency room is the only answer?

Because, AFAICT, every generation that grows up in civilization without experiencing any major disasters (like the Great Depression, or WW2) is a bigger bunch of sissies than the preceding one. I wouldn't have wanted to mess with most of my parents' generation, even when they were old and decrepit.

You see a lot of (generally healthy) people go to the doctor for the (mild) flu these days, too. Drives me crazy.
-Kle.

How about a minor emergency clinic
Genreally free standing or in a drug store
Visits are @$30, and I have used them quite satisfactorily

Sequel:

I spent the morning puttering and exercising, after I got off the Internet. I was in my chainmail doing core body exercises (almost done with 'em), when the phone rang and it was my daughter explaining to me how she had shown her swollen thumb to her teacher, who told her: "You need to have that checked by a doctor, you could lose your thumb." Of course my daughter had told her teacher how I reacted to this "emergency", and how, "My Dad just likes to let things take care of themselves when he can't be bothered", etc. And the teacher said, "That's ABUSE!"

So word got to the office somehow, and not ten minutes after my daughter had rung off, agreeing to stay for the rest of the day in school, I got a call from the vice principal: "Amy's thumb is rather swollen and she can't write; do you want her to stay in school or are you going to come check her out of school?"

"Oh, I will come and check her out at once." *click*

You see, three strikes and I am out: why fight it?

So I went to the attendance office and my daughter was not there waiting for me, like the VP had said she would be: the attendance office didn't know anything about my situation or my daughter.

Then Amy puts her head through the door and wants to know what I am doing there. She had emerged from her earlier interview with the VP assuming that I was going to just let her stay to the end of school. But as I had come to check her out I was dammed if I was going home alone! So we went.

On the way home Amy explained how she had described me to the teacher and VP. "Does your father abuse you?" the VP wanted to know.

"Of course not, he never touches me. He's just annoyed at everything."

The VP nodded and said that dads can get that way alright.

So at home I poked the infected area and squeezed puss out and told my daughter to keep it clean and keep pushing the puss out when it built up: and we would watch it and if the infected part got bigger we would go to the doc.

Her Mom came home from her trip in the afternoon (I was Mr Mom for four days) and the two of them went to the "urgent care" place (not quite an ER) and got Amy some pain reliever, antibiotic and antifungent.

So Dad's intransigence is overruled, again. But you won't get Me in for anything less than becoming murderous from pain of some sort. I let my body heal on its own, so that antibiotics will work when thy are really needed. (Yeah, I explained that to Amy too: how over-use of antibiotics vitiates their efficacy over time, but that advice went in one and out the other along with everything else I had to say on the subject….)

Doug, my own 16-year-old daughter (Miss Hypochondriac 2009) felt that your daughter was rather over-reacting, FWIW. She said she'd have grabbed a pair of nail clippers and snipped the hangnail off in the first place.

Wow, When I was a kid, the only injuries that went the emergency room were bones poking through the skin and blood that pumped out of the wound more than 6 inches. All others were treated at home. Mostly with the adage, " Stand up, walk around, shake it off!"

This may or may not have relevance.

All through High School I worked in the kitchen of a restaurant, both as a prep cook and line cook. One Sunday afternoon I was making a large batch (60lbs) of mashed potatoes. These were made from scratch, so the as soon as the taters are boiled they get drained and go right in the industrial size mixer where they are blended with butter, milk, salt and pepper. The mixer blends them quickly enough that they stay scalding hot.

The blending done, I kneeled to lifted the large aluminum mixing bowl out of the cradle to set it in its wheeled dolly. The right handle then slipped from my grasp. My unconscious reaction was to grab at the lost handle, but since I was still holding onto the left side the resulting pivot meant that rather than grabbing at thin air, my hand went straight into the mashed potatoes. A split second later the aluminum bowl hit the floor and I had scalding tatties all over me as well.

I was fortunate that most of them hit my chef jacket, which protected me enough that I only had bad first degree burns on my neck and chest. I only had a few splatters on my face, which left second degree burns. My hand didn't fare as well. When I pulled it out of the mash I stared at it for a second waiting for the pain to hit, then watched in horror as all the skin slid off in one piece, like some sort of flesh glove.

My boss let me go home* and I drove there with due speed. Since my Dad was active duty USAF, I couldn't go to the local civvy ER but had to head for the nearest base hospital, which was 20 miles away. Home was on the way and since by this time the pain was off the charts I knew I'd need Dad to drive me. I pulled up in front of the garage, where he was puttering with some project, and showed him what they did to his baby boy. He wasn't that impressed and told me I'd better drive myself to the ER. I stood there looking at him like he was nuts and he said "You'd better get going," then resumed his project.

So I got going, screaming the last ten miles and holding my hand in front of the dash vent with the A/C going full tilt and still ready to vomit from the pain. It took a long time to heal, but there was no permanent damage and I still love mashed potatoes. I never did learn what the marital repercussions were when my mother, the Registered Nurse, got home from work that evening.

The point of my long and hopefully not too boring story is not that my Dad taught me a very valuable lesson that day, a lesson in self-reliance. It's okay to ask for help, but help won't always be there. In fact, 22 years on I can say that help usually isn't there, so it's best to be prepared to shift for yourself. Another lesson I figured out myself on that long drive to the ER is this; when you see someone is really injured, stop what you're doing and help them.

*If you've ever worked in a restaurant you know that's not a given.

Enfant, whoa! I think that a scalded, skinless hand would not have gone under my radar. What was your daddy thinking?…