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dragonlady7No really. So I got back from Pennsic and I had this horrible eczema flare, that had started before I left-- all the dishes, dyeing, laundry, etc. in the prep had broken me out horribly between my fingers, and it was an ongoing drama of horror. It got worse at Pennsic and I had bleeding blisters on multiple occasions. Mostly on my left hand, but a few on my right. On my right ring finger, facing in slightly toward my middle finger, I had a particularly nasty eczema blister, that didn't do the usual itch-weep-turn into inflamed skin- sort of heal-- itch-weep-turn into inflamed skin cycle-- it just kept being a really hideous blister.
I got back from Pennsic, and started moisturizing, started using tea tree oil, started doing the things I normally do for eczema. (I'd been trying to do them at Pennsic but just you try applying ointment liberally over both hands in the Swamp, while managing a really busy bar. That would work for about thirty seconds before I either got it full of dirt or had to do something that washed/rubbed it off.) My left hand kept cracking and bleeding and it was gross. My right hand, it was really just that one blister, and it hurt like the dickens.
Eventually the rest sort of healed; the blisters on my left hand scabbed over into tiny red dots, and retreated under cracked dry gross red skin, which gradually responded to ointment and got less cracked and dry, at least. It's flared again since, but no bleeding.
The right hand, though, that blister just got more and more painful and nasty, over the course of about two weeks. Finally I realized it wasn't a normal eczema blister; instead of being full of clear liquid, like those are, it was much deeper down in my skin, and seemed to be full of something white. Ummm.... That seemed bad.
It was also swelling, and my whole finger was starting to swell, and the back of my hand near that finger. It was obviously infected, and full of pus; the pressure was awful and sometimes my hand would throb. I didn't like that. So I did the gross self-medicating thing, and sterilized a pin and popped the skin.
I got about half a pencil eraser's worth of pus out of it. It was absolutely disgusting. I put a bandage over it and went to work. More and more fluid kept coming out; I kept having to change the Band-Aid. I got super creepy about hygeine and started obsessively sanitizing, which I might mention hurt like the dickens in all of my eczema blisters, including the gross one. I hydrogen peroxided and rubbing alcohol'd everything. And every time I took that Band-Aid off, I could squeeze like another quarter pencil eraser's worth of pus out of that thing. It was like, chartreuse neon green. Disgusting. Horrifying.
Of course I went to the doctor. I'm not an idiot. (Also, just before I self-surgeried, I'd visited a friend who coincidentally was a doctor-- not a GP, so he wasn't going to look at it or anything, and I wouldn't have asked, but he saw it across the room and said WHAT IS THAT GO GET THAT FIXED, pretty much just like that, which I took as a pretty good incentive to hie me to a medical professional.)
My normal doctor, who had dismissed my ezcema with a "well, if it stays bad let me know", wasn't available, so I went to Whoever Ya Got at my practice (a medical group-- handy), who was a very nice young woman. I peeled the Band-Aid off and she, well, wasn't as horrified as I'd secretly hoped for-- everyone likes to impress the doctor-- but immediately said "I'm culturing that for MRSA. Not that I think it is, but I'm putting you on an antibiotic that'll kill it anyway."
Well, it was.
They said don't worry, the stuff you're on already killed it, just let us know if it doesn't respond, or eats your whole hand off or something.
It's gone; there's just a gross scabby crater where the blister was. I lost kind of a lot of epidermis, but it's healing. But I remain pretty darn horrified.
So that's my brush with flesh-eating bacteria. Hopefully it's my last. In other news, I got a new lens, but I'm rather drained by the whole MRSA-recounting thing, and I'm going to go think about something else now. I will tell you the saga of the impulse-purchased (used) Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR some other time.
I got back from Pennsic, and started moisturizing, started using tea tree oil, started doing the things I normally do for eczema. (I'd been trying to do them at Pennsic but just you try applying ointment liberally over both hands in the Swamp, while managing a really busy bar. That would work for about thirty seconds before I either got it full of dirt or had to do something that washed/rubbed it off.) My left hand kept cracking and bleeding and it was gross. My right hand, it was really just that one blister, and it hurt like the dickens.
Eventually the rest sort of healed; the blisters on my left hand scabbed over into tiny red dots, and retreated under cracked dry gross red skin, which gradually responded to ointment and got less cracked and dry, at least. It's flared again since, but no bleeding.
The right hand, though, that blister just got more and more painful and nasty, over the course of about two weeks. Finally I realized it wasn't a normal eczema blister; instead of being full of clear liquid, like those are, it was much deeper down in my skin, and seemed to be full of something white. Ummm.... That seemed bad.
It was also swelling, and my whole finger was starting to swell, and the back of my hand near that finger. It was obviously infected, and full of pus; the pressure was awful and sometimes my hand would throb. I didn't like that. So I did the gross self-medicating thing, and sterilized a pin and popped the skin.
I got about half a pencil eraser's worth of pus out of it. It was absolutely disgusting. I put a bandage over it and went to work. More and more fluid kept coming out; I kept having to change the Band-Aid. I got super creepy about hygeine and started obsessively sanitizing, which I might mention hurt like the dickens in all of my eczema blisters, including the gross one. I hydrogen peroxided and rubbing alcohol'd everything. And every time I took that Band-Aid off, I could squeeze like another quarter pencil eraser's worth of pus out of that thing. It was like, chartreuse neon green. Disgusting. Horrifying.
Of course I went to the doctor. I'm not an idiot. (Also, just before I self-surgeried, I'd visited a friend who coincidentally was a doctor-- not a GP, so he wasn't going to look at it or anything, and I wouldn't have asked, but he saw it across the room and said WHAT IS THAT GO GET THAT FIXED, pretty much just like that, which I took as a pretty good incentive to hie me to a medical professional.)
My normal doctor, who had dismissed my ezcema with a "well, if it stays bad let me know", wasn't available, so I went to Whoever Ya Got at my practice (a medical group-- handy), who was a very nice young woman. I peeled the Band-Aid off and she, well, wasn't as horrified as I'd secretly hoped for-- everyone likes to impress the doctor-- but immediately said "I'm culturing that for MRSA. Not that I think it is, but I'm putting you on an antibiotic that'll kill it anyway."
Well, it was.
They said don't worry, the stuff you're on already killed it, just let us know if it doesn't respond, or eats your whole hand off or something.
It's gone; there's just a gross scabby crater where the blister was. I lost kind of a lot of epidermis, but it's healing. But I remain pretty darn horrified.
So that's my brush with flesh-eating bacteria. Hopefully it's my last. In other news, I got a new lens, but I'm rather drained by the whole MRSA-recounting thing, and I'm going to go think about something else now. I will tell you the saga of the impulse-purchased (used) Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR some other time.
