THROWN INTO SHARP RELIEF

BEING late autumn and all that, I am trying desperately to get a rather unruly garden in order.

I much prefer the razed earth approach at this time of year, and am always mindful of my dear departed father’s advice: If you want to know if a plant is a weed or a flower, simply pull it. If it comes out easily, it is a flower. If it is difficult to remove, it is a weed.

Anyway, typically, I managed to get a skelf deep in my finger.

The word is probably derived from the Dutch word, ‘schelf ’, which means a flake of wood. (Probably the only time having a half Dutch mother has helped me!) Posh people would probably call it a splinter or a sliver, but, in my opinion at least, ‘skelf ’ is far more emotive. I tried all the normal stuff to get it out. Sucking on it furiously didn’t help and made me look odd. Digging around in my finger with a hypodermic needle also made me turn a strange colour. So I decided to opt for patience and allow Mother Nature to do what she does best. Because, almost always, skelfs will work their own way out in the end.

Which got me thinking about my patients and what they do under similar circumstances. Firstly, they probably suffer in silence, unlike me who moaned my face off to anyone who would listen. Next they would go through the same process as I did. Except their attempts to remove the skelf would start and stop with licking and chewing at the affected site. Pretty soon, the area would become a raw, saturated, inflamed mess. If the skelf is really bad, severe self-trauma can occur. I remember an elderly Jack Russell who stood on glass. He removed part of his own toe trying to get the skelf out. It was not a pretty sight and recovery was prolonged and painful.

And then you have the skelfs to end all skelfs.

Last year, one of our vets was presented with a dog who had a nasty discharging, purulent wound on his side. Careful cleaning of the area revealed what at first we thought to be a sharp piece of dry scab. It wasn’t. It turned out to be a cocktail stick that had somehow made its way from the dog’s stomach, through the abdominal wall. Quite remarkable.

A while back, I examined a Golden Retriever. The presenting complaint was rear end pain. The dog was anxious and fidgeted when squatting and was wary of sitting down. Presuming anal gland pain, I was surprised to find they were normal. One latex glove and a digital examination later, I was flabbergasted to feel something sharp pierce my finger. Careful manipulation finally allowed me to pull, from the dog’s bottom, an entire, full length, wooden, chicken skewer that the owner remembered having disappeared from a barbecue the week before.

Surely the biggest ever skelf on record...but I did tell you they tend to work their way out in the end.