Yesterday, whilst down the allotment, I was clearing a path of the encroachment of an abandoned neighbour plot's goji berry bush. I'd taken the brushcutter to it and was clearing the resultant mess when I managed to - as I thought - get a thorn puncture the first joint of my third finger leaving some of the thorn behind in the wound.
Forward three hours and by the time I got home the pain was Not Good, there was substantial swelling and I'd lost movement in it. I dug the rest of the thorn out with a pokey thing and tweezers, but it was clearly Not Right. After consulting 111 I took me to A&E where I discovered that there is something worse than sitting for hours in A&E on a Sunday night - sitting in A&E on Sunday night with a littl'un watching peppa pig on their iPad at full volume.
I was the beneficiary of an x-ray which was meant to identify if anything was left in the wound (Really? sub mm particles, too?) and eventually sent away with broad spectrum antibiotics by a doctor who had no real idea what might have caused the reaction, which frankly is what I would like to know.
Today, there is a small improvement in that I now have almost 30 degrees of free movement from the joint (it won't straighten and doesn't reach 90, still only about 5 degrees at the knuckle, still hot and swollen around that first joint. My plan is to visit the doctor tomorrow if there is no substantial improvement, although I don't hold out much hope of their knowing much more about the origin and likely remedy.
In the meantime, feel free to provide a diagnosis of the cause of the reaction. Can a normal infection really occur that quickly? Is there poison involved? Bitten by a critter? A subminiature alien ray gun?