Note: some blood and gore content

Let me be clear, I am very squeamish. I cannot stand blood, broken bones or anything that alludes to medical related issues.

On Saturday night I watched The Bone Collector. I should have known from the title that this was not the wisest choice but like a moth drawn to a flame there I was watching a film where people get tortured to death and bits of bloody bone get left as a clue. When Denzel Washington slams that chaps hand in the bed mechanism, I was almost beyond hope.

Anyway, there I was leaving work a couple of days ago and having a quick check to see if there was any blog reading material for the tube journey home and I see that WWDD had just put up a new post. “Great” I think “and it’s a really long post too so that will eat up some of my journey.” So, let's move forward twenty minutes and there I am on the tube reading this post . Now the fact that it involves a graphic accident involving public transport might be seen as ironic given where I was when I was reading it, but the effect on me was rather telling. Descriptions of gashes in legs, including the fact that the bone was visible was too much for me. I could feel myself beginning to feel a little grey, but I kept on reading because I did actually want to know what happened. Let me tell you, there were a couple of occasions where I wasn’t quite sure whether I was going to make it to the end – of either the post or my journey. Do you ever get a kind of tingling feeling in your hands when you see something that disturbs you? It’s the feeling you get sometimes before fainting (not that I can think of an occasion where I have actually fainted). Well, I was getting that feeling.

When I did get to the end of the post, I was tempted to sit there with my head in my hands in the hope that somehow getting the blood flow back to my head might help, but my brain kept going back to the thought of being able to see the bone in someone’s leg. You know you shouldn’t think about it, but your mind wanders back anyway...

So then I decided to look at the newspaper I had with me to try and put my mind on something else and the story I turn to is about some bloke who suddenly coughs up a nail that he was accidentally shot with about thirty years ago. What is going on?? Suffice to say that did not help and I returned to trying to blank my mind of all medical related images. Fortunately I did finally get myself back to sanity in time to walk home but that was definitely a night to need to clear my head on the walk home...

Once I was on the train going into work and a bloke had a nose bleed in front of me. I was standing up and he was sitting down and I could just about cope with the sight of the blood, until, he started to swallow it… At that point I could feel myself start to feel ill. I broke out into a cold sweat and had to grip the pole I was standing next to really tightly because I knew I would just be on the floor if I didn’t. I really wanted to sit down but he was the most obvious person to ask and it just didn’t seem right it ask him - and I wasn’t sure I could speak anyway. When I got to my stop I managed to get off the train and then had to take a bit of time to recover my composure. In the grand scheme of things it was nothing, but that tell you how pathetic I am about such things.

I just cannot stand blood and gore. At work I do various fire warden type things but just cannot train to be a first aider because I know that I would pass out if I actually had to deal with anyone. It’s just not the job for me...

So some level of warning - perhaps rating the blood and gore factor of a post - would be appreciated. You wouldn’t want me to pass out on the tube, now would you?