Don't put your finger between an elephant's teeth.

Back in February, I was playing with the baby elephant at the elephant camp. Elephants like sweet and salty things (unsurprising when you eat 100kg of bland leaves every day) and the baby was licking my sweaty palms. I wondered if a 4 month old who wouldn't eat banana skins had teeth and inched my right hand a little bit more into his mouth and felt that he did indeed have teeth. At which point he immediately bit my finger. Elephants have powerful jaws and it hurt, a lot. I don't think he really wanted to hurt me because I didn't hit him very hard with my free hand and he let go. I think it was more curiosity.

My right ring finger immediately went numb but didn't look bad. Elephants have very wide and flat teeth so it was more numbness from pressure than a wound - the nail didn't crack, there was no blood etc. After 12 hours the feeling came back to my finger.

After a day or two I saw that a small amount of the nail at the front had lifted off the nail bed but I didn't pay much attention to it. It didn't hurt at all. Sadly during the next two months the nail continued to lift up and eventually I showed it to a doctor, who said I should have it removed. This bothered me because I knew it would involve painful injections, probably a painful procedure and then a painful recovery. Nonetheless I went to the hospital paid £8 for my surgery. The procedure went well and the anesthetic actually worked, so it didn't hurt. I was prescribed ibuprofen (you can't buy it over the counter here!) and sent home. The nurse did a good job and the pain was very minimal - by the second day I wasn't even taking the pills. The finger was bandaged up nicely and only hurt when I knocked it, which I did two times despite the immense pain of the first bash.

What annoyed me was that I was told I needed to have the wound cleaned and the dressing changed every day for ten days.There's a subsidised mini-clinic near the village so I zipped over to it the next day. The "Doctor" cut the dressing off with a pair of kitchen scissors (ow) before ripping it off, which hurt because the wound had healed into the gauze and dried (ow) before aggressively cleaning the wound with saline (ow). She told me they didn't have the sticky bandage to go around the dressing so I should make do with a flimsy bit of gauze. Then she had the audacity to charge me 50 baht! Well, Bill Gates didn't get rich by writing a lot of cheques and I wasn't going to endure this procedure nine more times and and pay 500 baht for the privelege. I chartered a ride to the nearest pharmacy and the nice lady sold me the tools I would need to do the cleaning and dressing myself for 28 baht.

My ingenius inclusion of a reversed plaster in the healing aparatus stopped the wound healing into the dressing and allowed some air in, which cut the healing time down massively. The nail is now growing back but it looks a bit leperous.

I hope my lesson teaches you something about putting your fingers where they don't belong.

I won't be updating this blog any more - go to The Penang Blog to see my new and exciting Malaysia blog!