i left the GPs surgery having had the wound re-dressed and told to return after the weekend when the stitches would have to be removed, and when the senior nurse would be on duty. On Monday 18 Feb I rolled up once more at the surgery – I say ‘rolled up’ – I was chauffeur driven by my wife – driving being one of many things I suddenly found i was unable to do.

I’m told removal of stitches can pinch a little – and they certainly did. I think there were 15 stitches in all (like little spiders, said my cousin Babs), and unlike those you might get on larger parts of the body, these very fine stitches in the finger and palm were something else. Those in the palm were healing nicely but the finger was still in a state of oozing, and proved to be the most difficult to remove – but, hey, I manned up, and the senior nurse did a great job:

A fresh dressing was applied as the wound was still leaking, and we were given a pack of iodine non-adherent dressings and sterile lint dressings to change each day.

The only problem was, the infection was still virulent, and very soon the burning and stabbing pains returned along with … a NEW GROWTH!! … this time on the TOP of the finger:

W-H-A-A-A-T! GO AWAY! Well, it didn’t go away – it just got bigger and bigger!!

At this stage, I still didn’t know exactly what was causing it. By now, I was hoping it would be on the mend and it would just be a case of taking some meds for a short while to clear it up. Not only that, gigs were looming in a few weeks time – it had been fortunate (if that is the right word) that we had had no gigs during January and February, so with 6 weeks between the operation and the first Bonzo shows I had calculated it would all be healed up and ready to go … not quite.

On Thursday 21 Feb I found myself once more in the Orthopaedic Outpatients Clinic ready to be told what the next stage would be. my wife and I were called into the cubicle and waited – across the corridor we could intermittently hear the voice of my consultant on the telephone talking to other departments. She eventually came in to say that she was handing me over to INFECTIOUS DISEASES The biopsy had demonstrated the hand was no longer in need of orthopaedic treatment, as it was a BACTERIAL INFECTION, probably from coming into contact with FISH, but they were still waiting for the culture to grow significantly to pinpoint exactly to which group of bacteria it belonged.

Within minutes, the eminent professor heading up the Clinic for Infectious Diseases phoned me directly on my mobile and asked me to visit his clinic the next day. Here again was another example of the NHS being absolutely brilliant. This was real joined up thinking in action – something the NHS is often criticised for not doing … they are getting a bad press lately and our own hospital features on the news struggling to cope with budgets, cutbacks, understaffing, low pay for some and inundated with patients.

Meanwhile, without any treatment, the swelling on the top of my hand was also growing …