Infected Wound

The wound you swore was fine has made its case to your blood. Crimson streaks climb past the joint toward your heart, your glands sit swollen like walnuts under the skin, and the fever has you talking to people who aren't in the room. The doctor opens everything, packs it with carbolic gauze, and stops promising things.

• Bedridden and delirious, you whisper names and secrets you never meant to say aloud
• If you survive, no work of any kind for 7 days, you can barely lift a cup
• A sunken, ropey scar where the doctor cut the rot out, yours for life
• /me lies grey and sweat-soaked, lips moving through a fevered argument with someone long dead

Recovery 7 days at death's door under constant care, untreated, the streaks reach your heart.·Doctor, urgently

An abscess the size of a hen's egg has pocketed down against the bone. The doctor puts you under chloroform, opens the wound wider than it ever was, and scrapes it to clean red flesh before packing it with carbolic-soaked gauze that must be pulled and repacked daily.

• Daily repacking of the wound, each pull of the gauze is its own event
• The limb is splinted and useless for 4 days
• Low fever and no appetite for 3 days
• /me moves like glass, one hand hovering over the bandaged wound

Recovery 6 days with the doctor repacking daily, skip a packing and the pocket refills.·Doctor required

The doctor probes the hot swelling and his forceps click on something soft: a plug of your own shirt, driven deep the day you were hurt and rotting in there since. Every surgeon knows the cloth kills more men than the lead. Getting it out is a long, bad quarter hour with a leather strap between your teeth.

• No use of the injured limb for 3 days while the emptied track drains
• A weeping wound that must be dressed twice daily
• You flinch at the sight of forceps now, and say so

Recovery 5 days once the cloth is out, it was never going to heal with it in there.·Doctor required

Wound fever arrives at dusk like it kept an appointment. By midnight you're soaked through and arguing with the lamp, and the wound itself sits swollen and shiny as a plum. The doctor lances it, drains it, doses you with quinine, and tells whoever is near to keep you in that bed by force if needed.

• Delirious every night for 2 nights, free rein to say things you'll regret
• Too weak to ride for 4 days
• Cold-cloth nursing needed through the fever nights
• /me shivers under two blankets, eyes glassy, holding a one-sided conversation

Recovery 5 days with lancing and quinine, untreated the fever climbs and the streaks start.·Doctor, urgently

The doctor takes one look, says 'this needed me a week ago,' and opens the swelling with a lance. What comes out would put you off your supper, and the relief is instant and shameful. The wound gets a carbolic wash that burns worse than the original injury.

• Open drain in the wound for 3 days, keep it clean or roll again
• The carbolic sting makes you hiss at every dressing change
• No heavy lifting on that side for 3 days

Recovery 4 days draining with daily washes, 7 and a worse abscess if you let it seal over.·Doctor required

The wound isn't closing right, the flesh at its edges has grown up spongy and raw, what the doc calls proud flesh. He burns it back with a silver nitrate stick, matter-of-fact as trimming a hoof, and you learn a new definition of the word sting.

• Dressing changes every day, each one ending with the caustic stick
• The wound site is tender to the lightest touch for 4 days
• /me sucks air through their teeth and pulls their arm back before the doc even touches it

Recovery 5 days of burn-and-bind, untreated the wound stays open and invites worse.·Doctor required

Caught before it pocketed, but only just. The prescription is carbolic washes twice a day, hot poultices between, and absolute rest for the limb. The cure is honest work: the carbolic burns going in and the poultice scalds going on, and you'll do it all again come evening.

• Twice-daily washes you can be heard reacting to from outside
• Wounded limb bound and rested for 3 days
• A pink, angry scar forming that you'll be showing people for years

Recovery 4 days of diligent washing, slack off and it abscesses proper.·Doctor required

The skin around the wound is tight, red, and radiates heat like a stove lid. There's a deep throb timed to your heartbeat that keeps you up at night. Bread-and-milk poultices to draw it, whiskey inside and out, and you keep one eye on it for streaks.

• Poultice bound over the wound, changed every few hours
• Sleep comes hard for 2 nights from the throbbing
• Check the wound aloud at least once a scene, you can't stop looking

Recovery 4 days of poultice and rest, or a date with the lance if it swells.·Doctor required

It's gone sour but shallow. Somebody boils milk and bread into a scalding mash, slaps it on, and binds it, the old remedy, and it works if you keep at it. Your days now revolve around the ritual of unwinding, wincing, and rewrapping.

• Poultice changes three times a day for 2 days
• The wound weeps, keep the bandage fresh and visible
• /me unwinds a stained bandage and grimaces at what the poultice drew out

Recovery 3 days of faithful poulticing, 5 careless ones if you skip changes.·Doctor advised

One night of real fever, soaked sheets, wild dreams, waking at dawn wrung out like a dishrag. The wound is angrier than yesterday but the fever broke on its own, this time. It was a warning shot, and you both know it.

• Weak and washed-out for 1 day, no hard labor
• Dark circles and a haunted look worth commenting on
• The wound needs cleaning and fresh dressing twice a day for 2 days

Recovery 3 days if you start tending it properly today, it will not warn you twice.·Doctor advised

You rode when the doctor said walk, worked when he said rest, and the wound tore its stitches open to make its complaint. Now you're back on his table getting restitched, and the scolding is somehow worse than the needle.

• Fresh silk sutures, genuinely no riding for 2 days this time
• The doc tells everyone who'll listen exactly what you did
• The rebuilt scar is wider and prouder than the original would have been

Recovery 4 days if you actually rest, and the doctor has opinions about that.·Doctor required

There's a yellow crust at the wound's edge and a smell you pretend not to notice. It hasn't gone deep yet. A hard scrub with whiskey and carbolic, fresh dressings, and it should turn, but the scrubbing brings tears to your eyes.

• Wound scrubbed and redressed twice daily for 2 days
• You favor the spot obviously, guarding it from every bump and handshake
• /me angles their body to keep the bandaged side away from the crowd

Recovery 3 days of clean dressings, left alone it pockets and earns the lance.·Doctor advised

A deep, patient ache has settled into the wound, flaring with every use of the limb. It's the body's way of billing you for neglect. Hot soaks morning and night, a sling or wrap to enforce the lesson, and it grudgingly settles.

• Limb wrapped or slung for 2 days
• Visible wince any time something brushes the wound
• Hot soak twice daily, build it into your camp routine

Recovery 3 days of soaks and rest, 5 if you keep testing it.·Doctor advised

A ring of red around the wound and a warmth that wasn't there yesterday, but you caught it at the garden gate. A stinging whiskey wash, a clean bandage, and a vow to actually change it this time puts you back on the right side of the ledger.

• Fresh bandage to be changed daily for 2 days
• The whiskey wash stings enough to swear by
• A small tender spot you press absentmindedly when thinking

Recovery 2 days of clean dressings and it settles.·No doctor needed

You sacrifice two fingers of good rye to the wound instead of your gullet and hiss through the burn. Whatever was starting in there thinks better of it. The camp agrees it was the noblest use of whiskey witnessed all year.

• Bandage stays on for 2 days, changed daily
• You tell the story of wasting good rye with genuine grief
• /me pours whiskey over the wound and makes a sound the whole camp hears

Recovery 2 days and a clean bandage does it.·No doctor needed

The wound itches like sin and looks pinker than you'd like, but the heat is ordinary healing heat, not the bad kind. Keep it clean, keep your fingernails off it, and it'll close honest.

• No scratching, an actual battle you must visibly fight for 2 days
• Clean dressing once a day
• The healing itch makes you fidgety in conversation

Recovery 2 days of leaving it alone, which is harder than it sounds.·No doctor needed

The redness that scared you this morning fades by evening. Underneath, a thick, ugly, magnificent scab has taken over the work. It pulls when you move and looks worse than it is, which is good for sympathy.

• The scab pulls, small winces when stretching for 1 day
• Milk the sympathy while the wound still looks dramatic
• Keep it dry for 2 days

Recovery A day or two and it's just a scab doing scab work.·No doctor needed

The little swelling you'd been dreading opens on its own in the night and drains clean, leaving flat, honest pink behind. Your body handled its own doctoring and sends no bill.

• A stained bandage to change once, then done
• Bragging rights: 'my blood don't tolerate rot'
• Barely a mark left to point to

Recovery A day, mostly for tidiness.·No doctor needed

The dark color that had the camp muttering about gangrene turns out to be plain deep bruising working its way out. The doc pokes it once, says 'that's a bruise,' and charges you two bits for the education.

• A spectacular bruise in sunset colors, worth showing off
• Mild tenderness for 1 day
• The camp owes you an apology for all the funeral talk

Recovery A day or two as the colors fade.·No doctor needed

Overnight the wound swells, opens, and pushes out a splinter of wood the length of your thumbnail that no one knew was in there. The track drains itself clean behind it. The doctor turns the splinter over in the lamplight and admits, quietly, that he would have missed it too.

• The splinter, kept as a pocket token or watch-chain charm
• The wound heals cleaner and faster than it had any right to
• The doctor tells this story now, you're a case study

Recovery 2 days and it closes like it was never angry.·No doctor needed