My Manky finger 
About three weeks ago my nervous habit of worrying the skin around my nails resulted in the area around the cuticul of my fourth finger (the one next to the little one) on my right hand, becoming red and sore - I stopped picking it but it then started to feel really saw and ooze greeny/yellowy/baige stuff. I cleaned it with TCP and washed it alot but a crusty layer appeared around the base of the nail and this would break each time it was prodded and more pussy stuff would come out.
I cleaned it with detol and Al germolined it to high heaven and plastered it as I needed to do gardening and washing up and deal with potty training and the like. I was letting it air over night and it appeared to be getting better - not being so painfull and swollen as a raised lump just under the nail had appeared but this now just looked a bit like a burned area.
Then I was due to go to London for four days and Al dressed the area as the skin had 'pulled' away from the bottom of the nail but it looked like it was getting better. On the way back from London the dressing came off and lo! An apporximatly 2 mm thick line had appeared at the base of the nail - the finger had also started to hurt again the day before but now it felt like I had caught my nail with a hammer at the same time as having a huge splinter in there!
Anyway so today I get to see the dr having phoned up Monday - the Dr was erm thats a nasty infection you need antibiotics - then she asked how long it had been infected over all and I said three weeks - she winced :/
Its most definatly an antibiotics case and I left it far to long to go the drs with it and I am probably going to lose the nail - a new one should grow back and if it becomes too flappy or loose then I might have to go and see the nurses and have them help the situation along.
So I am now on antibiotics which i have to take four times a day :/ It needs to show a stark improvement within the week or I have to go back again. When I went to the drs today there was a red aura around the white - and there appears to be a gap at the bottom of the nail where there is no nail - I don't know how clear that is on the photo!
As an exercise in her art class, Sarah made some pictures by cutting out shapes in coloured paper:
Coincidentally, at about this time, I was thinking that I ought to screw a bit of wood to the wall in my workshop and hang tools from it to make them more accessible, and to store them more compactly than having them sitting on a shelf (which is the worst way of using a shelf EVER). So I was delighted when Sarah announced that she'd thought her pictures could be stuck to a piece of wood to make me a toolboard...
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Last night I took part in a poetry night this was the second Earshot that I have read at - there has only ever been two and it was also the second time I have read my poetry in public. I shook the whole time I read. I picked two poems one called Ice which discribes the life cycle of a romantic relationship using ice in its various guises as extended metaphors - this went down so well that I people coming up to me to say what they loved about it. The second poem was one for me and was my Programmers Lament which I think only I understood. I am going for the one scientific poem on arty deep one - I know that no one gets the scientific ones but I think they are my better poetry!
Anyway the upstart of this was that the judges where apparently divided as to who should get the trophy and as always I missed the top spot and Clare from my writting class took home the trophy for her darkly funny poems about Opps I killed My Mother/Husband/Children.
Again I was reading what is termed page poetry at an event which is trying to bridge the gap between performance poetry and page poetry - I consider poetry to be primarially an oral tradition so I find the distinct odd but basically I'm serious subjects in a non-comedic/dramatised style where the Performance poets are serious(or not) subjects done comedic or dramatically.
I'm not sure you can really compare the two styles and as the night contained prose writing too I didnt envy the judges. But then I am going to be biased having missed out so narrowly 
Still I feel that this marks the beginning of the next major stage of my writting career - not sure how but I got to see and speak to people involved in glastonbury's poetry tent, various litrature festivals and those doing the creative writing courses at the University here. However I still feel a bit of a frued as I wouldn't say I'm a poet as I struggle to get most poetry - the 'poems' I writ are written becuase they appear in my head and I need to get them out of there.
Sarah and I went to TechAdventure in Bristol on Saturday.
It was fun! We'd both been rather sad about the fact that we'd not really gotten into the local geek scene. Almost all our nerdy friends are London-based. So we were keen to go to a local geek event...
So we swapped some EPROM programming and erasing gear for some books and a patch panel at the swapshop.
I was rigged for motion capture:
We have a video of me moving around with the rig on. It's rather dark, so you need to turn the brightness and contrast all the way up to see it properly...
We saw John Honniball and a tiny subset of his extensive collection of ancient computers.
We saw a guy who'd made a plotter from a turntable and a horizontal carriage from a printer.
And we saw and participated in a whole bunch of other stuff...
And we met loads of people. Which is great, since we want to meet more tecchie people from this neck of the woods!
Today found me at Stroud Hospital again this time to see a pain consultant like the people I was seeeing pre-Jean at Chelsea and Westmister. I am getting a new tens machine and some acupuncture (after alot of rechecking that I wasnt still on blood thinners - not sure where they got that idea from) and my pain monitored by someone at Gloucester, there are alos more meds I can try but due to stomache issues etc... we decided to try non-drug method but it is good to know there are still more options open to me including a chilli cream and an medication usually used for epileptics (alters nural activity which can be useful in getting rid of pain as well as controlling epilepsy - they had to do the whole be laboured - we are not saying you are epileptic thing incase I was stupid wwhich to be far I was doing a good impression of being stupid as I found I couldn't remeber what I had been prescribed in the past for my back :/).
The anti-inflamitry I had been using is not ok to use long term even with the stomach liner and would make me sick. I am again on daily paracetamol though - they say as long as I stick to the max dosage or below I should be fine.
Again the death knell - they can not do anything about the 'crepitous' and I am stuck with these injuries for the rest of my life but they can alliviate the pain and reduce the muscle tension which is actually cuasing most of the pain.
My pelvis was examined too which including squuzing my hips together - this has since caused a reassurgance of the clicking and I thought my right leg was going to explode from the pain about 20 minutes after the examination. This is apparently my hormones fualt and how they are settiling down
My wrist, stomache and other sundry things are being considered low priority as I am mostly looking after Jean and we are not dependent on money I earn. Again concerns where voiced about going to London on a regular basis for my MRes so I explained that a)it would be part time and b)I can do alot of it via distance learning. Apparently they can't inject the shoulder as its not the actual ball joint thats affected but rather underneith the shoulder blade (as I have been saying for years) - the lack of injection makes me sad though as that worked so well on my upper spine and after being told they would not opperate was my one big hope.
I really really hope this acupuncture works but have to confess that I'm a bit scared as I think of it as lots of needles being stuck into the skin - I have no idea if this is actually the case and even if it is I shall give it ago.
In the mean time I am to carry on managing things as I have been ie my physio excersises and hot baths and pillows in odd places to help me sleep.
