I valiantly picked myself (and my pride) up off the pavement and hobbled home to assess my wounds. A skinned hand and a skinned knee, both of which seemed reasonably superficial in the grand scheme of things. I cleaned them up in the shower, slapped a plaster on my hand and went to bed.

My wounds this morning were still sore and oozy but I pretty much expected this though wasn't particularly looking forward to tapping at high speeds on my steno all day. My morning was very full but incredibly interesting so I didn't mind too much.

At lunch I sat down on one of the sofas in our office then realised my left hand looked a bit strange though it wasn't hurting any more than it had done earlier. I thought it was just bruising coming out, which was a fairly idiotic assumption consideirng I had red splotches on my hand and a sinister looking red line streaking up my arm alongside my veins and tendons.

Thank God Emily made me go and see Matron as I don't think I would have bothered off my own volition. Matron took one look at my arm and informed me I had a blood infection - the redness was its track marks - and had to get to hospital to have it seen to straight away.

My first day of not being at work due to illness in nearly six years! Luckily there was cover for my court and I was bundled into a taxi and had �15 shoved into my hand by my workmate Lizzy (legend), who told the driver to hotfoot it to the Royal London Hospital. The nicest cabbie ever, who chatted to me in a jolly fashion as I was fairly distressed by this point and told me about the time he trod on a rusty nail whilst making me promise to not leave without getting a tetanus jab.

So I rocked up to A&E and three very quick (yeah right) hours later I'd received a nice new plaster for my wound and a tetanus injection.

The Nurse: 'It will hurt!'

Me, in anticipation of horrible stabby needle: 'AAAAAGGGH.'

Nurse: 'Oh sorry, I meant afterwards, not the injection itself.'

Me: *Picks my eyebrows back down from the ceiling*

That and a packet of antibiotics and on my merry way I went! I enquired what happens if you don't get these kind of things treated and was given the bleak answer that first your arm would swell up and by that point it would be too late and you'd most likely be hospitalised and put on a drip. So take heed, one and all, health is PRECIOUS.

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