WARNING: This story contains graphic images
Phil Clark doesn’t remember exactly how he nicked his thumb – but the day after what he likened to a “minor paper cut” he knew it had nearly killed him.
In a small room at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital, a doctor cut into the chef’s swollen and blistered thumb.
“He said: ‘You’re not going to feel anything’ and then he just put a knife straight to my hand, like an orange . . . and then he goes ‘We need to go to theatre now, because you’re about an hour away from either losing your thumb or your life’.”
Clark had blood poisoning tracking up his arm and towards his heart. Two surgeries and an eight-day hospital stay followed. A month later, the cafe owner and former fine dining chef is still off work and hoping he has avoided a skin graft operation.
He also hopes his story will encourage others – especially stoic “Kiwi blokes” – to pay more attention to apparently minor cuts and grazes.
“I wasn’t taking it seriously because I was like, ‘How many times have I cut myself?’ I’ve gone fishing, I’ve been hunting . . . as a chef, I’ve cut myself many times, and this was the least dramatic sort of cut. It was so tiny.”
Clark, whose fine dining career culminated in the award-winning restaurant Phil’s Kitchen, now owns and operates a daytime cafe, Kingsland Social, with his wife, Marine.
It was the Monday after Mother’s Day – a frantically busy weekend for the family-friendly cafe – and Clark was cleaning down the kitchen for an early finish and a trip to Western Springs Park with Marine and their three children, aged 8, 6 and 5, when he felt a stinging sensation.
“I believe it happened when I was either doing some dishes or cutting vegetables. I didn’t notice it, it was so minor, like a paper cut, right in the middle of my thumb. No blood, nothing. I noticed it when it started to hurt when I was sanitising and cleaning down the kitchen.”
He applied antiseptic cream and went to the park with his family. But his thumb kept throbbing and, back at home, he started to feel worse.
“By 10pm, I was in agony. Uncontrollable shakes, feeling cold, shivering. I had a hot shower to warm myself up, piled on jumpers and my hoodie.”
At 8am, he was first in line at White Cross St Luke’s Urgent Care, where he was examined and referred to Middlemore Hospital for specialist hand care. He arrived there around 9am, and estimates there were already 100 people in the waiting area.
“I’m in the service industry. I didn’t make a scene. I just waited my time.”
He’d been given strong painkillers and was, he says, still convinced his was “the least dramatic” case waiting for attention.
“I just sat on the chair, holding my arms, with my hoodie over my head, trying to make myself as comfortable as possible. It was just my thumb.”
But the thumb kept getting bigger. It developed blisters. And, around four to five hours into his wait, he was asked by a nurse to remove his hoodie for a blood pressure check.
“As soon as I took it off, we saw the tracking . . . they rushed me upstairs.”
Clark remembers the doctor cutting into his swollen thumb, and trying to sign papers with his left hand.
“I was passing in and out. And I just woke up six hours later, post-theatre.
“They’d cut from the top of my thumb to the bottom, down the middle. And they’d cut my wrist open and did a clean out there as well.”
Despite the initial wait, he says Middlemore staff “were amazing. I would like to give them full credit, because I really felt that I was cared for”.
Subsequent skin cultures grew two types of bacteria commonly carried by humans – Streptococcus pyogenes and Staphylococcus aureus (the latter is found on around 30% of the population).
“I believe what happened was my body was just so worn down,” says Clark. “I was just exhausted and it attacked my immune system straight away because I was so exhausted.”
In hospital, he was treated with intravenous antibiotics and “I had my whole hand soaking in a bucket of Betadine [antiseptic] for 20 minutes, two times a day”.
His first thought? “Will people call me four-fingered Phil?!’” But, eventually, the seriousness of the situation registered.
“For 27 years, I’ve been a chef and I’ve really pushed ... opening my own place, getting two hats [in the Cuisine Good Food Awards], grafting so hard to have two places, Covid, three kids, a wedding ... it’s not been an easy journey.
“And you do think about life. Why are you doing this? Why have you done it? Why do you work seven days a week? There is a lot more to life. But at the end of the day, it’s your passion. This won’t stop me from doing what I love.”
Clark, known for his intricate and beautiful plating at Phil’s Kitchen, currently has minimal movement in his thumb. Holding a knife is extremely painful and he is rethinking his decision not to carry income protection insurance.
“You’re young, you’re fit. But this is a wake-up call. As much as us chefs think we’re tough, we’re not invincible.”
Wife Marine has found temporary staff to help keep Kingsland Social running, and Clark has started to help out at home with a few one-handed spaghetti bolognese and stir-fried meals.
“It’s frustrating for me. But it’s the process. It’s part of life. You can’t control everything ... I get tired pretty quickly and it’s going to take a while before I can build up that conditioning again.”
Doctors initially thought he would need a skin graft (“the hole in my thumb was down to the bone”) but Clark is hopeful he can avoid that.
“You know, I’ve spoken to a lot of guys, a lot of mates, who would have all done pretty much the same thing - just waited it out until it becomes more serious and not made a big deal about it. There just needs to be more awareness. The thumb infection was painful, but the poisoned blood travelling up my arm wasn’t, and that’s what’s killing you.
“Get some Betadine is my recommendation. It’s old school, it stings, we’ve all got memories of it at Grandma’s house ... but, you know what, my kids are going to have that same memory soon too.”
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk.
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