Just recently I read an example of how dangerous gardening could be. A little tidying up and pruning can cause severe health problems, which could lead to amputation of limbs and even death!

An example of this was in some newspapers¹about a week ago. A pensioner was gardening when a rose thorn embedded into his finger. Two weeks later, he developed blood poisoning, resulting in his arm being amputated. Sadly, the infection worsened and he died from a massive heart attack. Shocking is it not?

I hope by reading my article it will make you think more about taking the necessary precautions, which I will talk about later on.

Almost everyone has suffered some kind of injury from a thorny plant in the past, but we just dig the thorn out and think nothing of it. Sometimes though, it is not that easy.

I used to spend weeks pruning roses at work and as I was so used to it I never bothered wearing gloves. I had many thorns in my hands and arms which I used to dig out, not thinking anymore about it. Then one day I had a deep thorn in my wrist, which one of the First Aiders at work had to get out for me. I knew I needed a First Aider to help me as I just could not see it clearly enough.

Well, after about half an hour of picking, poking and scraping, she managed to carefully lift it out with a pair of tweezers. I had a plaster put on and thought no more. The next morning I had a red mark going up my arm. The point where the thorn had been was swollen. After a trip to my doctor, I was told it was an infection and was given a course of antibiotics and antihistamine tablets. Fortunately after about a week it cleared up. From then on I always wore gardening gloves which gave a little protection, except for the odd thorn which found its way through.

I was lucky, as I have heard of cases in the past where people ended up having serious infections and in the worst case scenario they had to have limbs amputated. It just shows that an easy job of pruning roses could end up in disaster.

I apologise if any of this has caused distress, but I just wanted to get the point across that plants can be dangerous. The following points are things which you can do as a precaution when gardening:

• Wear good quality thorn resistant gloves.



• Seek medical help immediately, if a thorn wound turns red and swollen.



• Make sure that you are up-to-date with your
  tetanus jabs.



• Use a sharp pair of secateurs to avoid having to pull any attached stems off by hand.

Apart from roses there are many other plants which can cause you problems. If interested, see an article I wrote in the past called Beware of the Plants From Hell.

Enjoy your garden and do not let any of this put you off. It is general advice to keep you safe and sound!

Nigel's Gardening Hints and Tips
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