Dracula Bites Thumb

The plays and musicals of the open-air theater in our town are currently running all summer!

Last week I attended an excellent performance of the musical "Dracula".

And last week I had a little Dracula experience myself.

As a victim of the menopause, I have been trying out all kinds of therapies, hormones, etc. All expensive and unsuccessful, not to mention the side-effects.

So it was through the Internet that I learned of a new therapy, in the form of a cream that one rubs on various parts of one's body twice a day.

Well, it only cost €19.95 and according to reviews, is the miracle therapy of the 21st century.

So I hotfooted it to the website and ordered it.

The miracle cream arrived last Saturday morning. I had thought that I was ordering it from England, but in fact it was sent from a company in the Channel Islands, La Guernsey to be precise. More confusing was that when I tore open the package and found said cream, the description on the little tub said that it had been "Manufactured in the USA".

The little tub was enclosed in one of those welded-on plastic covers that it is impossible to remove. You know the type. First you break two fingernails, then you exercise some energy with a pair of scissors. You throw the tub around the room a couple of times, then you nearly burst a blood vessel trying to tear it apart. Finally you find your sharpest knife and attack it in a manner that you know is going to lead to tears or even a call to the emergency services, but you do it anyway.

In this case I was able to make a tiny tear in the plastic but an even larger tear in my thumb. Blood sprouted profusely, it was clear that I needed to divert my attention to that rather than the opening of the tub. So I fumbled around in the plaster drawer.

Less than 3 minutes later, I had managed to stem some of the bleeding with a plaster. The plaster drawer was quite full of blood by this time. I decided a second plaster was required, which led to more blood in the plaster drawer and quite some blood on the kitchen floor.

I turned my attention back to the little tub, while realizing that my blood was now spurting out through the sides of the plasters and depositing itself over more kitchen surfaces. Cursing, I snatched a couple of sheets of kitchen roll and attempted to stem the blood flow by wrapping the kitchen roll very tightly around my thumb.

The kitchen roll was soon soaked through and after clutching at more roll from the dispenser, which was now empty, I attempted to find a new roll in a cupboard. Blood was now being freely dispersed into the cupboard, into the sink, the bin and again, the floor.

Cursing further, I realized that the only way to stop the flow of blood would be a visit to the emergency doctor. The emergency services are located about 10 minutes walk from my flat, so donned with a further 5 sheets of kitchen roll and clutching the entire roll, I made my way there through the pedestrian precinct.

Already visualizing the headlines in our local paper: Dracula Bites Thumb, Distraught Woman Sighted With Kitchen Roll.

It must have been a good 35 minutes after the accident that the emergency doctor finally viewed my thumb, which was still bleeding! He bandaged it up, apparently not very well, as blood was still flowing faintly around 5 p.m. And when I returned, I needed to clean the entire kitchen.