BehindTheMedspeak: The incredible healing power of hot water

Last night (Monday) around 10 p.m. I looked at my left ring finger, where it had been punctured by a thorn during Sunday's nightmarish Pennypack Park Half-Marathon in Philadelphia.

I'd grabbed at anything I could reach as I slipped in the mud and rock on the treacherous up-and-down trail and come up with a handful of thornbush that ripped my finger to shreds, lacerating the medial surface and producing a spurt of blood.

I didn't notice till about an hour later that there was thorn deeply embedded in the distal aspect of the extensor surface, entirely subcutaneous without any place to gain purchase with my other hand's fingers and pull it out.

No matter, I had other things to deal with at the time, being miles away from the finish in the midst of the most frightening course I've ever been on, hoping to simply get to the finish line without falling and fracturing my skull or breaking an ankle.

Cut to the end of the race, when I was finally able to sit down and dig the thorn out with my trusty Swiss Army knife.

Once I removed the thorn the deep wound bled like stink but hey, you know the medical mantra: "Bleeding always stops."

And it did.

And that was it for that problem — until 10 p.m. last night, when I looked at the finger after I banged it on something and recoiled in pain.

I noticed the area around the thorn's entry point was bright red and swollen, a sure sign of incipient infection.

The wound had already closed on its own.

Time to invoke hot water soaking, a wonderful treatment for anything because there's only upside: it might not help but it won't hurt, something you can't say for many medical interventions.

I gave the finger a dunking in a cup of the hottest tap water I could stand for 10 minutes, repeating the treatment 15 minutes later.

I woke up this morning and it must have been better 'cause it didn't even occur to me to me to look at it until 15 minutes ago.

Lo and behold, the affected area (above, in a photo taken seven [7] minutes ago) is no longer swollen nor bright red and it no longer hurts.

Done and dusted.

The bill is in the mail.

Fair warning: The photos above are the last ones by my iPhone 4S that will ever appear here.

Future pictures will be taken with my iPhone 5, arriving tomorrow.