Just when you think the world isn’t scary enough as it is, life throws another fastball at you to deal with, especially when it comes to your health in particular.
Thanks to the advent of modern medicine and the common, public knowledge everyone has about diseases and illness, life for humanity at present is probably at its longest, safest, and most comfortable point in the history of mankind.
This, however, doesn’t mean that we are invulnerable – in fact, we are far from it, as this recently viral story goes to show.
In the Hubei province of China, a news story about a 53-year-old woman identified only as Mrs Zhang is proving that horrors still lurk around every corner, and that the vulnerability of our bodies can be exposed at any second.
Mrs Zhang was doing something that was totally ordinary, as far as events go – she was simply doing some housework.
At a glance, this doesn’t seem like an event that would be a cause for any concern.
Neither would most of us think of the small cut she got on her finger a problem.
After all, we all get plenty of small, insignificant cuts during the course of our everyday life, and we often think nothing of it. At most we give it a wash and go on our merry way.
To no one’s surprise, Mrs Zhang had essentially done the same thing.
Seeing that the cut was so small, she simply ignored it, trusting her body’s ability to repair wounds would be more than enough for this cut.
This, as you can imagine, is a reasonable assumption. Alas, this would soon prove to be a terrible assumption for Mrs Zhang to make in this case.
About two days later, Mrs Zhang noticed that there was a bruise forming around the wound.
This initially wasn’t a cause for alarm until the began to spread.
Within days, all her fingers save her left thumb and her right pinky had turned black and misshapen on both hands, with some fingers being worse than others.
It got to the point, in fact, that her entire left hand turned a shade darker towards black.
Alarmed, Mrs Zhang went to seek professional help from a nearby doctor.
It was then she learned that she had gotten gangrene in both of her hands.
Considering that she had not noticed any strange smell, and that the gangrene had affected her extremities, this was likely dry gangrene.
Known as a form of necrosis, this means that basically most – if not all – the tissue in her fingertips had died.
In other words, the reason this woman’s fingers had turned black was due to the fact that they are essentially dead.
Mrs Zhang immediately was sent to the hospital, where she received treatment and is thankfully responding well to said treatment.
Unfortunately, it remains to be seen if she will be able to regain full use or recovery of her fingers. It is very likely they will have to be amputated.
What is more important, however, that she still has the rest of her hands intact, and that no further damage has been done since.
In other words, the reason this woman’s fingers had turned black was due to the fact that they are essentially dead.
Mrs Zhang immediately was sent to the hospital, where she received treatment and is thankfully responding well to said treatment.
Unfortunately, it remains to be seen if she will be able to regain full use or recovery of her fingers.
It is very likely they will have to be amputated.
What is more important, however, that she still has the rest of her hands intact, and that no further damage has been done since.
