Fair Warning

I change a lot of diapers. I don't mind it. My daughter is still fairly tiny, and someone changed mine when I was a young nugget. I also make a habit of washing my hands directly afterwards, and I recently learned exactly why. A few weeks ago I noticed that the right side of my right thumbnail appeared damaged. I found this immediately odd, since I recalled no incident that would result in such damage. I also noticed the skin around the cuticle was red and swollen. Although this was a tad disturbing, I did as I often do at the onset of signs or symptoms of injury or illness. I ignored it. A week later - worse. The whole right side of my nail was brown and jaggedy, and my cuticle had become red, swollen, cracked and excruciatingly tender. I glimpsed a fleck of poop on my thumb while changing a diaper (my ten-month-old is extremely uncooperative during diaper changes, and regularly kicks and flails about with her legs as if I was attempting to forcibly fasten flaming, thorny leggings to her chunky little legs). I quickly put two and two together, told my wife, and she made a doctor's appointment for me. The doctor took one look at my thumb and said I damaged my thumb. I told her my theory and she agreed right away. She prescribed the equivalents of amoxicillin and neosporin, then got to work on my thoroughly unappetizing thumb. First, a couple injections of lidocaine into the swollen skin around my cuticle. She prefaced these by saying "bee sting." If by 'bee sting', she meant intense, sustained, burning, scorpion-like injection - then she was completely accurate. I looked away as she leveled the retractable scalpel onto my thumb. She coaxed out as much blood and fluid as possible, then cleaned me up and applied a small bandage. Yikes! After three and a half days of oral and topical medication, the swelling has gone down significantly and I feel I'm on the mend. I'll be sure to take every last prescribed dose. More importantly, I wash much more thoroughly after every single diaper change, every visit to the bathroom, every several public doorknobs, handrails, you fill-in-the-blank. This has been a semi-graphic heads-up, from me to you. Sadly, "poop" is not nearly as harmless as it sounds. And, while I got off easy - with minor cuticle damage. It could have been much, much worse. I feel the need to go, now, and wash my hands. I recommend you do the same - if not right now - soon. Have a nice day :-)