Tuesday, August 25, 2009

TCP!

I wanted to write about the wonders of fish oil today - but instead I find myself writing about TCP.

When I woke up today my hands and fingers were itching like Hades. Then I spotted an old tube of TCP cream. It was a nasty brown colour and incredibly sticky. But nothing else had worked since the fleas on the cat attacked me on Friday night. Any port in a storm.

I squeezed the first, dirty, bit of TCP cream out and had a heck of a job trying to wash it down the sink and get it off my hands. I then applied a slightly cleaner looking section of cream to my hands but not to my arms. Amazingly, within a couple of hours the flea bite blisters and the itching on my fingers had gone. In fact the skin became quite wrinkled and pale, suggesting that swelling had subsided.

I didn't want to put TCP on my arms because of the smell. I would have stunk all day. So I tried a newer antiseptic from the first aid kit. This seemed to relieve things a little during the day but the blotches did not disappear as dramatically as on the fingers. A second application later on as had more effect. There are still blotches but much reduced.

This suggests that the fleas may have infected me with something quite nasty. I'm only lucky it wasn't bubonic plague or something equally unpleasant.

I think I'll try another dose of TCP tonight just to make sure.

RAS

2 comments:

James said...

Doesn't TCP contain Sodium Salicylate?

RAS said...

It looks like you're right, James. I was desperate and at the end of the day it didn't work very well.