She'll be right yeah? No way, Jose! But honey healed my leg.

Preamble

I came across a local bee keeper one Saturday morning recently. He was selling jars of honey at one of our nearby food markets. Anyone who knows me also knows how I love to chat and it didn't take long before we were swopping yarns about bees and hives and things, and he was regaling me about the beneficial effects of honey and how bees go about doing what they do:

• only one queen bee per hive;
• queen bee rules;
• male workers travel up to 5km per day;
• males are only employed to do one thing;
• so if they don't perform, out they go, etc, etc

This got me thinking about an accident I had a year or two back, and so here is my story.

The Accident

While trimming some shrubs in the garden, I was on rough soft ground, digging in the legs of my aluminium step ladder, while standing on the bottom rung, less than half a metre (about a foot and a half for my North American buddies) above the dirt.  Sound pretty harmless, eh? Well next thing, quick as a lizard drinking, I was lying on my side in agony. I immediately jumped up and started hopping around, like a bush kangaroo, nursing the outside of my battered lower leg, which was red and raw and oh so painful.

It's times like these when polite words fail and profanities kick in. A veritable profusion of fluent Anglo-Saxon expelled itself from my mouth, silencing the late afternoon jovial chatter of the kookaburra lazily perched on the branch above my head, not to mention disturbing the neighbours.

It took me a while to work out that the bottom of the ladder had sheared away sideways downslope, taking my feet with it. But the real damage came when the thin flat metal tray, which forms the top of every step ladder, came crashing down on me, skidding across my top few layers of leg skin, intent on finding an anchor (my leg) to stop its downhill run.

OK, the bleeding wasn't too bad, so a bit of direct pressure on the wound does the trick, while hopping around (in the kitchen now) grabbing some ice in a tea towel. "She'll be right" (famous Aussie understatement), yep "she'll be right," I muttered more to convince myself than anything else, "if I just keep the ice on for a while". Grin and bear it is the manly thing to do. Plenty ice to keep the bruising under control.

"Better see the doctor," came sage advice from my long suffering better half.

"Nah, she'll be right. Only a shallow flesh wound", I retorted, now reverting back to intelligible English, of sorts.

The Gruesome Details

Well, next day of course 'she' was far from right, nor was 'she' right the next day, and no amount of self administering could prevent my leg from swelling up like a hot air balloon and a huge bruise forming from my ankle to my hip. I had had the good sense to put some iodine on the wound and cover it with a dressing but it later transpired that a nasty infection had set in, irrespective. Incidentally, bruises aren't always black and blue. This one was an unsubtle blend of both, but punctuated by streaks of yellow, pink and green (just for the artists out there). 

When I eventually fronted up to the doctor, several days later, he immediately put me on antibiotics. Of course the first batch didn't do the trick and several trips later, followed by an X-ray to ensure the infection hadn't reached the bone, a course (or three) of different antibiotics, and things were eventually starting to settle down. I was left, however, with a rather large hole in my leg, due to the infection creating, for lack of a better analogy, a mini explosion on the side of my leg. I had to change the dressing daily and the scene that greeted me under the old one wasn't pretty, much like a pothole in a muddy gritty dirt track.

I trust nobody reading this is having dinner (or breakfast depending upon your time zone), but I promise you there is a point to this whole (or is it hole) story.

The Healing

My family doctor, an expat Singaporean, knows me well and delights in the usual lecture on the inappropriateness of self-healing.

"Would you, Mr Engineer, ask a medic to build a bridge?", etc, etc.

Anyway, in between the usual banter about medics and engineers, he starts babbling on about honey. I think he must be pulling my leg, as Singaporean Chinese are renowned for humour and chit chat. Perhaps I misheard him, although his English is impeccable; no 'Chinglish' language here.

"What's that, doc, eat more honey? Does that improve circulation?"

"No", he retorts, "The bleeding has stopped, so you spread it on your leg, when you change your dressing daily. Sally (his nurse) will show you how." 

Still unsure of this advice from left field, I do what any sane self practitioner would do. I Google it. So next visit to the doc, I'm full of the pros and cos (well mostly pros) of manuka honey and have downloaded a couple of papers from the Nursing Times, which I show him impressively, probably hoping to convince myself rather than anyone else that we are, well he is, on the right track.

"Don't need those, Mr Engineer. Eastern medicine has been using honey for thousands of years for slow healing wounds. It's a natural antiseptic, prevents infection."

Anyway, long story short, my leg eventually came good and the skin, very slowly, but magically, grew back into and across the wound, thanks to the amazing healing effects of the honey. I have been left with a large pink bare patch, however, with no manly leg hair and devoid of melanin, not to mention smooth as a baby's bottom, literally. It could have been worse, though, it could have been my face, although some might say that would have been an improvement, in my case.

Words of Wisdom 

So there are a few morals to this story as follows:

• Don't pick a fight with a step ladder!
• Engineers don't make good self healers!
• Don't ask your local GP to build you a bridge!
• Western medicine is bullshit ! No, just joking!
• Always listen to your doctor, particularly if he is not an engineer!

But best of all:

• Honey is a wonderfull healer of wounds!!!!!!!

Of course, we bees on beBee already know this, yes?

For those who enjoyed reading this post, you may enjoy the sequel which is at the following link:  https://www.bebee.com/producer/@ken-boddie/honey-heals-wounds  

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Ken Boddie is a consulting engineer and an enthusiastic photographer, rarely leisure-travelling without his Canon.  He loves to interact with other like-minded people, particularly those with an artistic background or technical awareness.

Ken's three day work week (part time commitment) as a consulting engineer allows him to follow his photography interests, and to plan trips to an ever increasing list of countries and places of scenic beauty and cultural diversity.

When not analysing consulting issues or writing posts,  Ken chases his creative side, the results of which can be seen as selected photographs of his travels on his website at:

http://ken-boddie.squarespace.com