What Kills Us This Week?

Now that I've pulled my head out of the waterfall and am back on planet earth, I discover I've missed an entirely new panic.

What's happened is that last week a fellow got scratched on the back of his leg by a bamboo basket:

One of these things.

It was such a small scratch he didn't do anything about it ... and five days later he had the leg amputated to save his life.

And the newspaper account of the incident mentioned that eight other folks have already died this year from similarly untreated small cuts, along with a casual mention of something called a necrotizing fasciitis.

I think, in English, that means we have some big flesh eating bacteria doing the rounds of HK.

It's really creepy and we all talked about it last night, but I ended up having a good laugh over national characteristics, because, whereas Chinese take this seriously, the Australians were cheerfully saying things like "Hey, remember the Great Flesh Eating Bacteria Epidemic of 1902." and "Don't forget the necrotising spider bite epidemic in Brisbane back in wheneveritwas!" and seeing the lunacy in panicking about it.

The latter remark, however, gave me a bit of a jolt because I was actually in Brisbane during the Big Necrotising Spider Epidemic of 1984 and, yes, I got bitten by a spider. At least I think it was a spider.  In the midst of an epidemic like that, you only ever think it's a spider.

So let's just assume it was a spider!

What happened was that the story was HUGE in the papers and there I was, working in the garden, pruning dead branches out of a large shrub, when I suddenly got bitten on the cheek.

Naturally, I'm instantly imagining my flesh turning black and raging fever and ambulances dashing to hospitals and doctors cutting out more and more of my face until it's down to the bone; and then I'm seeing myself faceless and alienated from the world, hiding away in some lonely garret with only cats for company, writing intense little novels about loss and loneliness, angst and anguish, which are found years after my lonely death, with my body lying there alone for months and eaten by my cats. But my books are published and instantly beloved of lost and lonely Goth girls everywhere, discussed in tutorials and book clubs the world over ...

... but unfortunately my face was swollen for over an hour and then it subsided.  And, although I monitored myself for days afterwards, nothing turned black and, to my surprise, I realised that I was almost but not quite disappointed.

However, here we are, Hong Kong 2010, with a strong warning doing the rounds of taking every little scratch seriously.  So that would have to be my choice for this week:

THREATDOWN

See how not even the 

street cleaner would touch it!