The Pointed Metal Bar.

So, at the end of last year I cut the back of my leg with a pointed metal bar - its intentions were meant for smashing concrete slabs in the front yard of my brother’s house. Fantastic. What a day this would be, I had thought prior. A bit of landscaping. The sun in the sky and clouds right beside. Physical labour. The muscles would be a’pumping.

The pointed metal bar must’ve cut me a bit deeper than I thought. Amidst the laughter and heckling of my brothers toward my pain and stupidity post-cutting said leg, I sprayed it with a mist of antiseptic. I’m not a doctor, but I have my First Aid qualification. I thought I did a good job. No, I knew I did a good job.

Come a week later, a sharp pain is nagging me on the inside of my leg. This pain arrived a day after I’d started to run again. Recreationally. I figured, oh yes, this must be a small strain.

Perhaps a tear, I then thought, a few days later as the pain grew firmer and longer.

I must’ve really tore the muscle, I then thought, as this pain stretched the entirety of the inside of my leg.

Sure enough, there was no tear.

Rather, a twenty-centimeter long, six-centimeter wide infection was in my leg. The doctor… and I, concluded that the infection had come from the back of my leg where the pointed metal bar had attacked me (I feel the need to add that the bar had no ill intentions, and that I had simply lifted it off the dirty, gross ground - is the ground gross? It didn’t do anything wrong - incorrectly, which caused the pointed end to cut the back of my leg).

The doctor had noted - and in his words: The surface of the leg, where the cut happened, is not infected. You did a good job cleaning that.

Thank you, doctor, I did a good job.

But the bacteria had entered deeper, and this infected the leg badly.

Oh, I understand, doctor.

I was on antibiotics for ten-days. Wow. This was a bit unfortunate. What a set of events. I cut my leg. I cleaned it. I failed (partly) at that. I then ran. I felt pain and thought, ah - the run. I felt more pain. And enough pain to the point of me with a constant limp and troubled sleep. My wife called me a fool. I visited a doctor. She was right. I recovered.

It made me think about the events of a simple cut that may’ve actually, potentially, even likely, have killed me, if I were alive in another time.

It made me think - would I be dead? If this was even a hundred years ago, could I have died if the infection had turned to sepsis? There’s certainly a chance. Crazy.

But not as crazy as the fact that I’ve just visited the doctor again after a red lump appeared on my elbow, which turned into a swollen elbow, which turned into another infection requiring yet another set of antibiotics.

I now must confront myself with a serious question. Am I toying with death? Am I, in my heart, attempting to confront death, and scare it with the wonders of modern medicine? Am I, perhaps, teasing death with its inability to take me? You cannot claim me, death. Is what I must be shouting.

My conclusion, after much yet minimal thought, is that I’m a careless fool that would be dead if not for the lives of others.