Warts and Fall (1982)
When I was 8 I had warts.
Lots and lots of warts.
It started with a funny lump on my thumb. It was right on the joint and it looked like a bit of squashed cauliflower. I didn't think much about it. I thought it might be a scab or some dried-on dirt, so I scrubbed at it and picked at it and it bled a bit but it wouldn't budge. Then I noticed it was getting bigger. It was spreading and seemed to be three or four times the size it used to be. And then I started getting more of these funny lumps on my fingers and thumbs...
Loads of my friends noticed and one of the teenagers who lived on my street started calling me names. He got all the other kids to dance around shouting 'Wart Hog! Wart Hog! Wart Hog!'
I cried and locked myself in the toilet.
I never could work out why a teenager liked to hang around with a bunch of 8 and 9 year olds; maybe he liked having people to boss around and pick on (sometimes he'd play games that involved us all going behind bushes and taking our clothes off, which now seems really odd and much much worse than all the name calling).
I must have been quite a sickly kid. I was a prolific bed-wetter - to the point that my folks often ran out of clean sheets and blankets. I could piss the bed two or three times a night and sometimes had to sleep on ironing board covers or cut-up bin-bags. That went on until I was about 14. And then there was the time I fell down the stairs, hit my head and had some sort of seizure. I had to have all sorts of tests done - the hospital couldn't find anything wrong with my head (ho ho ho) but they did discover a heart murmur. So I always felt like I was a nuisance. I was a big, unhealthy nuisance - always causing trouble for my folks by falling down stairs, pissing the bed or growing lumps on my hands...
Anyway - according to the grown ups, I had warts because I never washed my hands after going to the toilet. Or because I'd been playing in the dirt. Or I'd been on the same climbing frame as the scruffy kids from over the road. Or because I'd told a lie or because I hadn't tried hard enough at school... I ended up with at least one wart on every single one of my fingers and thumbs. I must have been telling a lot of lies or playing with loads of scruffy kids. I did feel as if I'd done something wrong - and that I was to blame for having weird, ugly hands*.
My Nanna turned up with a bottle of Compound W, so my folks started painting it onto my fingers and thumbs every day. It had a strong bleachy smell that made my eyes burn - but it seemed to work. The warts turned white and crispy and they looked like they were starting to peel off... but after a few days my hands really started to sting. I cried and I complained. My fingers felt like they were glowing and about to burst. I tried waving my hands about - almost as if I could wave the pain away, and then I cried some more.
My folks got hacked off and gave up.
Before I knew it I had a hospital appointment. The Skin Specialist said that warts were a common virus and they normally go away all by themselves but it looked like I needed a bit of help. A bit of help. That's when they brought out a huge canister with a small snowflake logo printed on it.
The Specialist told me that they were going to freeze my warts so they'd all turn into big balloons and fall off. Much much later I found out that they'd sprayed Liquid Nitrogen all over my fingers and thumbs. Liquid bastard Nitrogen! This was the fucking nuclear option.
I had never known pain like it. It felt like my hands were being scraped with a freezing cold cheese grater and I started to wish that I hadn't complained about the Compound W. I also decided that I was going to bite off the small warts that were growing on my bottom lip - there was no way I was letting that cold spray nozzle near my mouth.
It took two separate appointments to spray all of the warts (I blacked out during the second lot) and a few days later the warts did turn into big dark, blood coloured blisters. I looked like I was wearing a very gory pair of goalie gloves. I had bandages wrapped around my hands so that people couldn't see my swollen, lumpy fingers. It was painful to hold a pen or pencil at school - and sometimes yellowy liquid would seep through the dressings.
Eventually all of the blisters did burst and I had to run my hands under warm water to wash away the blood and loose bits of skin. I don't remember it hurting at that point - it was strangely fascinating to see little bits of me go down the plughole.
40 years later I still have small, pale white scars on my thumbs and on some of my fingers.
I wish I'd stuck with the Compound W. I wish I'd told that bully to fuck himself. I wish I'd asked for help or just spoke up for myself a bit more. I was really worried because when I started getting warts in my mouth I thought I was going to end up completely covered in them - I thought I might actually end up as one giant-sized wart. I was 8.
I didn't really learn anything from the experience. Years later when I started having palpitations at work or when I felt like I couldn't breathe and I was going to swallow my own tongue - I kept quiet. When I couldn't get to sleep without drinking a few cans of lager and when I spent most days wishing I was dead - I didn't tell anybody. I didn't speak up. I didn't get help. Not until much later when things were much much worse. It wasn't warts all over my fingers and thumbs, it wasn't something that anybody else could see, but it was something I needed help with.
I suppose this is the point where I should say something profound about warts you can see and warts that you can't - but the real message is; get help as soon as you can. The nuclear option is probably the worst option.
*I haven't ever had any more warts but I did find out that one of my folks had warts on their hands just before I'd started to get them. They'd felt too guilty to say anything about it because they'd assumed they'd passed them onto me. I wish I'd known about that at the time - I wouldn't have blamed myself for all of the pain, blood and lengthy trips to the hospital.
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