Manotoe

[Manotea]

So, earlier in the week I was padding around the house in bare feet and having nothing better to do decided to kick a doorpost which made the area round my little toe hurt like blazes. However I MTFU and got on with things, except a couple of days later I'm limping, so I wandered off to A&E to find out what's what. A couple of hours later I can report that I have a hairline fracture in the middle phalange (the bit your little toe sits on). Not quite the full David Beckham but close enough. The triage nurse pointed out that there was nowt to be done but I had them take a nice x-ray anyway. It's the only way to be sure.

But if you want to experience the full scorn of A&E reception, reporting you are there because you stubbed your little toe two days previously takes some beating. They were much more respectful when I arrived gushing blood from a botched attempt to cut a thumb off using a 9" circular saw!

[hellymedic]

OUCHY! GWS!
I'm surprised they x-rayed it as we 'do not perform any investigation unless the result affects the management'.

Anyway, I hope it's not too sore over Christmas.

[mattc]

Heh! Bad luck.

We could probably have a whole thread on ways to earn the  "full scorn of A&E reception". I picked up a few tips on my (entirely scorn-free  ) trip. Best has to be alcohol. Do NOT admit to booze as a contributory factor. Although at New Year you need a VERY good cover story, may be best to just admit idiocy.

[hellymedic]

A&E staff drink a fair bit themselves; convivial tipsy is seen as fair. Off your heid is not.

[Wobbly John]

When I 'probably' broke my little toe at work (dropped a big lump of oak on it) I went to see the school nurse. She told me "You could go to the hospital, but they'll probably just say "Ooooh, I bet that hurt" - and I've already done that." 

GWS

[Clare]

Oooh, I've done the very same thing, split the bone in half from the top right hand corner to the bottom left hand corner. For such a small bone the hurt was BIG. The only thing A&E did was stabilise the toe by taping it to the toe next to it.

[Kim]

You can get a surprising amount of pain out of a little toe.  This is part of the reason I pretty much always wear shoes^[1].


_{[1] Unfortunately you can also get a surprising amount of pain out of walking on surfaces that some people would consider innocuous if you've worn shoes pretty much every waking hour since the age of about 5.}

[zigzag]

sorry to hear that - broken toes hurt! hospital a&e's - they have more important/severe cases to deal with so i can understand their lack of sympathy. when i broke my second (index?) toe playing footie i only had an x-ray because they suspected that the first toe might have been broken as well, but as it was not i was told to tape it round to the middle toe and wait 'till it heals. it's still wonky, but i can't feel any pain/discomfort.

do not click here

[Nuncio]

But if you want to experience the full scorn of A&E reception, reporting you are there because you stubbed your little toe two days previously takes some beating.

Manotease.

[dave r]

I can remember many years ago falling off a step ladder and breaking the bone in my right heel, three days in hospital, eight weeks on crutches and three weeks walking with a stick, a total of eleven weeks off work, it surprised me by how much it hurt.
The most embarrassing and painful though was in the early part of last year, I had an episode of low flow priapsim, you can look it up but its an adult subject, in the end I needed to go into theatre for an operation to sort it, it had been going for 36 hours by then, that was surprisingly painful and very embarrassing to ask A&E to sort out.