The Finger

A lot of this week has focussed on Madeleine's finger. One night, after an exciting evening running around the flat with two non-English-speaking big kids, Madeleine's finger was somehow jammed in the door. She rushed to me, and cried at a pitch so stratospherically high that it was actually not not audible to human ears for several seconds. Then it was very audible, and for quite some time. Poor kid.

I wrapped it up and denied its existence for a while, but then when I peeked at it through half-shut eyes, I realised that it looked how it does in the above photo. Not very nice, really. Maybe I could just prick it with a needle, squeeze the gunk out then put a band-aid on it? I thought. But even to me that sounded like a bad idea.

So then I had to find a local children's doctor, try to convince the non-English speaking receptionist with my bad (ie, non-existent German) that I needed an appointment. And then I had to try and explain to the receptionist that while I haven't received my German health insurance card yet, we have signed up with a company, look, here's a slightly dog-eared fax with some numbers on it, eh? Eh?

But finally we got through. And the children's doctor was a nice lady in a white coat with lots of toys in her office. She examined Mads' manky finger with a peturbed expression.
There is blood under the nail,' she pronounced eventually. 'And poos.'

Well, blood was one thing. But poos was quite another.

She sent me off to another doctor - this time a nice man in a green outfit and a seemingly endless supply of packets of gummi bears which he kept producing, like magic, and I never worked out from where.

He examined Mads' finger and agreed about the blood, but said that it wasn't infected and that there was no pus (or poos) which I was mightily relieved to hear. Then he said 'I could take the nail off. It's going to fall off anyway. But I think it's maybe better just to leave it.'

I seconded that. I doubt all the gummi bears in Christendom could have helped us through such an experience.

Then he said 'So I think the best thing is to puncture the swelling and squeeze out the blood and then put a bandage on it.' Which, you may note, is what I'd briefly considered doing myself. But he did it much more swiftly and efficiently and with a lot less wincing than I would've.

I was expecting poor Mads to lift the roof with her wails while this happened, but she was surprisingly restrained. Earlier in the day she had whacked herself in the face with a banana (I really don't know how these things happen) and she cried just as much for that as she did when the doctor pricked her finger and squeezed the blood out.

Which makes for an interesting comparative scale, really; where 0 = no pain and 10 = finger jammed in door and 6.5 = banana in the face / pricked and squeezed finger.

This is how Madeleine's finger looked yesterday. I think it pretty much sums up how she felt about the whole experience: