09/07/2026
THE FINGER, THE HOLIDAY, THE TRAVEL AGENT AND THE WASHING MACHINE.
If you’re easily bored, skip this post. This is the story of how my beloved wife’s beloved right index finger scuttled our holiday to Europe, at least for a few weeks anyway.
So, last week Melinda innocuously bumped her finger and was then complaining for a couple of days that it was sore and swollen. I was about as concerned as the average husband until Sunday when I took a good look at it and it was REALLY sore and swollen. Because vets think they’re doctors in disguise, I confidently diagnosed cellulitis. I cheated a little, in that she had had cellulitis of the little finger on the same hand about 15 years ago, so even my retired, wine soaked brain was able to put two and two together and come up with something in the region of four.
So, under veterinary advice, we started some antibiotics and decided to wait till Monday morning to try to see Dr Shields. The wonderful GP that he is, he saw the photos Mel sent him on Monday morning and agreed to see her straight away despite being on vacation. Wisely, he fully concurred with her horse vet’s diagnosis and therapeutic plan, and decided to keep the antibiotics going and look at her again Thursday (today) morning . Also, despite still being on vacation himself. We started to get anxious about our holiday. We were booked to fly tomorrow at 2:15 pm from Sydney. Now, I suffer from mild blood pressure, so I thought I should take a precautionary blood pressure tablet.
By Wednesday morning the offending digit was much worse and had a large grey, brown, bulging discoloured area behind the fingernail. We sent Dr Shields more photos and he sent us straight off to John Hunter.
I won’t bother you with Melinda‘s medical history but suffice to say that she’s had a reasonable stint in just about every major hospital in Sydney. She’s already tried the Newcastle Mater (for an afternoon, delivered by ambulance in real style) and thought she better give John Hunter a crack.
We got there at 10 am. She was seen by the surgeon's registrar at 6 pm. Scheduled for surgery this morning. The registrar thought there was some chance we would still make the flight. I took two blood pressure tablets and tried to relax.
We were going to go to Sydney by train last night or early this morning to catch our flight. Our wonderful neighbor, Ray Davies, came in last night to find out what was happening and told me the trains were in disarray due to the Telstra outage and that he would happily drive us down if the need arose. I took three blood pressure tablets.
I had emailed our travel agent a couple of times during the week to give him a heads up that our flights may need to be cancelled but I did not say to cancel them. Somehow his replying emails went to my junk and I didn’t see them until he woke me this morning at 4 am with a WhatsApp message proudly announcing that he had cancelled our flights and that “All was good”. He was actually holidaying in Thailand himself, and I think the Thai interpreter he hired to look after his emails, while he was on the beach drinking cocktails, lost something in translation. I called him back to see if we could resurrect the flights in case Melinda was okay to come home today or even, at the latest, early tomorrow morning. It couldn’t be done. He thought he might get us on a flight the next day. I took my blood pressure. Highest ever. I sprinkled some blood pressure tablets liberally on my muesli, in lieu of sugar, and decided that little could be done until we found out what happened with the surgery today.
Before I went to the hospital, I thought I might as well put on one last load of washing. So I did, and the washing machine started spewing water all over the floor. I remembered that I was the last person to do anything mechanically with the washing machine, having cleaned out the filter. Have I told you that I’m a retired veterinarian not a washing machine mechanic? I probably have. I immediately decided that I must’ve cocked something up. I mopped up the dirty water with a towel, screwed the filter back in properly and started the machine. Amazing! No leakage. Then I decided I probably should put the dirty towel in. But the machine wouldn’t let me open the front loading door would it? I turned it off at the wall. Still wouldn’t let me open the door. I googled. Google said that there was a button on the front of the machine specifically designed for idiots like me. The button said “Add load”. On Google‘s advice, I pressed the button and “Open Sesame”, the door opened. By now my blood pressure was so low that every time I bent over the front of the washing machine, I nearly fainted, so I decided I better not take any more tablets.
Well, if you’ve made it this far without dropping off or dying of boredom, you might as well hear the end result of the story. Surgery went well. Mel should come home tomorrow or possibly the next day. Travel plans have been delayed for a month or so and travel insurance should cover most of the costs. We might even be missing the really hot weather in Europe. And Melinda can tick off another hospital that she’s tried! Every cloud has a silver lining!
