Have you ever hurt your finger in the office while slamming the drawer after a rough discussion with colleague? Did you ever find the staple pin prick your finger and blood ooze all out on your working desk? Or did you ever find yourself tripping over loose wires?
These are some of the injuries you can get in the office/workplace. But this short is not about the injuries you could get while working, this little writerly thing, or what I would like to call it a ‘note’ is to keep you vigilant of the urban legend called Bruised Nail. It affects 3 in 20 people who work in offices and now also wfh. No one knows how the bruised nail will get you but the start is usually an innocuous harmless looking injury caused in workplace or while working at your screen or shuffling printouts. But there have been instances when some people found their thumb or finger unnaturally large, red and looking like baked meat hurting like a 2 kg hammer was attacking furiously.
Did someone do voodoo on them? No one knows exactly and doctors refused to give any airtime to this phenomenon but on average around 100 people go to doctor with the injury that matches the specifics of bruised nail every year. Eventually they just stop coming, it’s only so many bandages you can cover your hurt from doctors who are not bothered with the why something happens and all they care is about the fat fee they receive. Ignorance is bliss for the doctors but the doctors who cared share their story is how they documented this freak nature that takes places only in the confines of the office with screens, and cabins. People who have experienced this second hand or know someone with bruised nail think it catches by being in contact with the infected person but no one knows.
What is bruised nail? It is what it says, when one of your finger nails turns to a deformed nail that is bruised under the bed of your nail skin. It puffs up and looks disgusting just like you can imagine, and no I am not going to find it and share it with you here. But bruised nail can catch hold of you anytime. It refuses to settle, no ointment or bandage can cure this particularly hideous thing. On an average it bloats to up to three inch and throbs making the owner of the nail not sleep. Painkillers help to subdue the pain, but are you willing to eat painkillers everyday of your life? Do you know that average painkillers cause dedation, drowsiness, or clouded thinking and even slowed breathing…This kills you slowly and furthermore, it affects your productivity and the way of life. Your normal life will no longer will remain normal.
Even if you cover the bruised nail it doesn’t stop the pain, only it makes it bearable to look at. Some of the folks found that they could live with the pain, but their life was cut short because the pain is throbbing which means it varies in intensity. Sometimes while driving the painful attack could make you take a turn that crashes to a wall. Life expectancy is questionable when bruised nail fancies you.
Is there any way to not be a target? Not really.
So be careful where you work, and take paper cuts seriously you don’t want Bruised Nail curse your life.
Fairy Dharawat Blog 