Amputation!

Well, not really, though at 5am in the morning after a completely sleepless night due to the pain all sorts of weird and disturbing possibilities were going through my sleep deprived head. The pain was from a seemingly innocuous and small graze on my right elbow that, due to my oversight of not putting something on it as soon as it had happened, suddenly became inflamed from infection late one evening. It swelled up to twice the size of normal, was a nice bright red colour, and the pain... well, let's just say that for someone who has had broken bones, torn tendons, and various other sporting injuries, this pain was as bad as anything I could recall.

So at 5am in the morning, the light barely starting to break in the east, I was a little concerned as to my infection.

When I finally overcome my embarrassment at having such pain from such a small graze (yes, seriously, I was a little embarrassed about it) and woke my friend I was staying with in Nairobi, we organised a trip to the local hospital. Now of course this was a major issue in and of itself, trying to decide which hospital would be most reputable and clean and using sterilised needles... etc. However unlike other areas within Kenya, Nairobi is a fairly westernised city with a lot of expatriates, diplomats, and indeed wealthy Kenyans, and the medical facilities reflect this. In the end went to a hospital around the corner called the Coptic Hospital, staffed it seemed by Egyptian and Israeli medical staff.

So everything seemed to be going kosher (excuse the pun!), until I walked into the doctor's office, and the first thing he said was, "Hmmm… don’t like the look of that, maybe we'll need to operate."

Well, probably no need to tell you the first thoughts that ran through my head (and besides, kids might be reading this, so better mind my language – kids, do your fucking homework and don't do drugs!), though I will say that I did have some concerns about whether this guy had my best interests at heart, or if he just liked cutting people open? Anyway, after this initial scare, I did swing him around to prescribing me some penicillin and painkillers and seeing how that worked first.

Yeah man, gimme them drugs!

Three days later, and though still a little red and tender, the drugs seem to be working... fingers' crossed.