This is the long/short(I don’t know, I’ll see where this takes me when I get there) story of how I fell down and grazed my knee. Like it? Lump it? You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.
It happened on Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon to be precise. My teacher had just cancelled our CSE tutorial so I left school for home an hour earlier than usual. It was blazing hot, with no wind and the humidity that makes the air feel like syrup(I got this ’syrup’ description from Anthony Horowitz). To top it off, the sun was shining high in the sky, having no intention of setting, because it was only about 3pm, and I could barely see 5 feet in front of me since it was so glaring. All I wanted to do was to get home as soon as I could and have a nice cold shower.
So while I was walking as fast as I could with my head ducked down, I suddenly tripped, tried to balance myself, failed and came crashing down onto the dirty gravel road on my left knee. Why so? Because:
1. I was day dreaming as usual, paying no attention to what I was doing(walking). I have this tendency when I’m in a cirumstance I don’t like or don’t wish to be in, like a sort of escape.
2. I was walking on the path, which is meant for PEOPLE to WALK on. The width of the path isn’t that wide, and there was also a dustbin on it, belonging to the house the path is in front of. I didn’t have any space to walk on, so I guess I tripped on the curb/edge of the path. My mother always tells me to walk on the road instead since there are hardly any cars around(and I can see if they’er coming my way anyway), but knowing my own day dreaming tendencies, I feel kind of insecure walking on it because I just KNOW that its just a matter of time before I get knocked down.
3. While I tripped, I actually DID try to hold onto the railings at the side of the path for support. But guess what? THE DUSTBIN blocked me from doing so! So I had no support.
End result: A very dirty, bloody, swoolen graze on the bottom of my left knee.
Oh, and a lot of pain.
I hobbled home on my bloodied knee(thank goodness home was only 2 minutes away) and showered, also taking time to bathe my wound with cold water(I always like to use cold water). Alas, some the dirt and grit from the gravel road still remained and because I couldn’t bear seeing my own raw flesh tainted with bits of grey and black who-knows-what, I took a tweezer and tried to pick them out, or the larger ones anyway. I did that for about 20 minutes before I gave up and started dabbing the graze with tissue paper, partly to absorb the blood, partly because some of the tiny bits of dirt also came off with on the tissue.
Then I was at a loss. I didn’t know which ointment to use. Do I use Dettol Antiseptic? Or the Chinese ointment? Or Zambuk? All are for wounds. I called my mother and she told me to use the antiseptic, so use it I did, with some gauze. But since I didn’t know that you couldn’t put gauze on these sort of wounds because when you take them off later, it’ll stick to the graze, I had to suffer with that pain too, and blood still seeped out onto the top layer of the gauze anyway(but not in the exaggerated manner some people might think).
The next day, my mother dressed my wound for me, since its difficult to do it myself. I thought that the dressing could survive the entire day(and I had a long day too, till 8.30pm), I didn’t think much of it till pus started to drip out of it(YES, OUT OF THE PLASTIC DRESSING) during German class. I looked down and it was positively bulging with the yellow sticky substance. And because I was afraid that it would continue to drip out while I was walking home later, I took a piece of tissue paper and tried to push as much pus out of the dressing as I could, absorbing it with the tissue(which, might I add, had turned very gross). It was the most disgusting thing ever and I never anticipated it, because I don’t remember dealing with pus for all my previous wounds(last one was 5 years ago). Ugh.
When I eventually took the plastic+gauze(the type that won’t stick) dressing off at home, my knee started to hurt even more terribly than the day before and I was stuck in a position where my knee only felt fine when my leg was in a 90 degree angle, so I couldn’t stretch my leg nor bend it too much. It was agony. I was still moaning when I went to bed.
Today has been better, but now that the bandaid is off again, it’s starting to hurt and feel stiff like it was yesterday. I peered at it more closely earlier, and realised, random as this sounds, that it looks like the cross section of a CHinese sausage, or alternatively, salami. It’s odd to think of my flesh as meat, but that’s what it is, isn’t it?
Also, I have my 2.4km run tomorrow and I don’t know if I should do it or not.
Help me.
***Oh no, I realised that the wound has hardened again now its exposed to air without dressing, and it hardened while my leg was stretched. Now when I try to bend my leg, it really hurts, like I’m tearing my skin apart. And it’s true. I’ve even got white “stretch marks” on my WOUND to prove it. And all along I thought it was stray cotton wool from yesterday and I kept trying to remove it. No wonder it hurt, its SKIN.
