two thumbs (and an index finger) up

On friday I took the stitches out of my finger.  Myself.  (I am such a badass.)  It had been ten days, and despite the good intentions of my 14 year-old doctor, the stitches were kind of badly done (they looked like they were done by a lumberjack in a dark forest) and it seemed like they had done all they good they were going to do. 

So I took them out and was left with a wound that was half neatly closed, half open, swollen, and lightly oozing.  This, after 10 days of regular cleaning, disinfecting and neosporin use.  So, I headed off to the most competent french medical professional I know of:  the pharmacist.

Happily, the pharmacist didn't offer me a suppository (surprising, though, since they seem to have a suppository for everything else here!)  What she did offer me, and you've probably already heard of these, is a bandaid with silver in the gauze part.

You know those neosporin commercials where they show you an ugly cut, and then they time-lapse to seven days later when the cut is healed and barely visible?  This is what happened to my big ugly cut, in the space of about 5 hours.  At about 2 pm I put the bandage on a swollen oozing bump, and when I peeked under the bandage just before dinner, it was flat, closed, clean, and basically healed.  Magic!