I came up with a slight lump on my back last Tuesday. I was in Italy, temperatures were in the low 30s so I thought it was the result of either an insect bite or as a reaction to another brand of washing power as that's a problem I've had before and that it would clear up in a few days.
By Thursday it had got a bit bigger but was just generally inflamed so I wasn't worried and decided to get it looked at in the UK if it hadn't gone down by then. We spent Friday and Saturday driving back to the UK with plenty of delays (P&O's new superferry on the Dover-Calais route is broken) and arrived back late last night. Mrs Jules had a quick prod and was a bit shocked as it was now leaking blood and pus and my entire back was red and inflamed so insisted on driving me to the our local NHS walk-in centre at 8am today.
Quickly seen by a nurse practioner with the good news that it was badly infected and that we needed to go a bigger A&E as it might need some serious exploration that I wouldn't want to be awake for, we went off to the West Middlesex. After only 90 mins wait (tip - A&E on Sunday morning is a good deal) I was expertly locally anesthetized, cut open, scraped out, re-anesthetized with apologies - "I wasn't expecting it to go that deep."
Unfortunately the location of the lump meant I couldn't watch but Mrs Jules (she's a scientist) was fascinated by the way the doctor's fingers fitted inside the hole and asked all the right questions. The answers apperently are "5cm" (how the hell you can have a 5cm deep hole in your skin!?), "It smells like cheese" - she had a sniff but couldn't identify the type, and "yes - he will have a permanent dent."
The doctor went off to get me two different types of antibiotic (excellent service - no queue and no fee) and a jolly nurse came in and spent 10 mins packing the hole.)
I now have about 2 weeks of dressing changes to come - I'm strongly advised to take pain killers before I go so they sound they are going to be fun too.