By Carol Pedersen

This article first appeared in NANthology, the NAN newsletter, in winter 2023.

Pain at the base of my thumb woke me in the middle of the night. “Osteoarthritis? Carpel Tunnel, finally?” I wondered. I massaged Voltaren into it and went back to sleep.

The next morning the pain was worse and my thumb quite swollen. I took Ibuprofen and iced it but by the following morning the swelling had increased and the pain was more severe, so my husband took me to Urgent Care.

The diagnosis was cellulitis—a common but potentially serious skin infection caused when bacteria, most commonly streptococcus or staphylococcus, enters through a break in the skin. Left untreated, the infection can spread to the lymph nodes and bloodstream and rapidly become life-threatening. Since I had no fever indicating the infection had become systemic, the doctor prescribed an antibiotic instead of sending me to the emergency room. In a couple of days the swelling and pain was gone and I finished the course of antibiotic after seven days.

The culprit? The cover of my scissors. While stitching, I had poked my hand at the base of the thumb with scissors (no blood). When the scissor is contaminated with organic material and moisture is present, the cover becomes an incubator. Organic material may be flecks of skin, nail, blood. Wool, cotton and silk are all organic material. In this case the cover is plastic; however, leather cover—or any that are impermeable—will also incubate bacteria.

While we’re more apt to stick ourselves with needles than with scissors, needles generally spend more time in the air where bacteria will die in a short period of time or in a pincushion surrounded by inorganic material and where moisture will wick out.

Lesson learned: whenever you poke yourself, especially with scissors, treat it immediately – wash and disinfect the wound and then bandage it if it is bleeding (again, mine did not). Periodically clean and disinfect your scissors; hand sanitizer works well or anything with a significant amount of alcohol.