cellulitis adventures

modern medicine, psa, don't be a dumbass

via https://ift.tt/Zm5MXtP

So on Friday I was cleaning in the barn, hosing rotting meat out of a floor drain. I tripped over the hose, and fell on the hand holding the hose sprayer, in a pile of moldy rat shit I’d tried to clean earlier but hadn’t done a great job on. The hose sprayer scraped my thumb, opening up a little cut and tearing the skin, which was annoying and hurt a lot.

Naturally I was like, listen I need to clean this really well, so I did. But I was busy, so I washed it really well and then didn’t bandage it, because I had a lot more grubby shit to work on and a bandage would just get soggy. I cleaned it again when I was done, but still forgot to bandage it. it was not a serious cut, it was more of a scrape, and it hadn’t really bled much, it was mostly just sort of scabbed over. Not a big deal.

Drove home to Buffalo on Saturday, and noticed it was a little sore, maybe a bit puffy. Ah, not great. I cleaned it again, put neosporin on it this time. Went to bed. In the morning I reapplied antibiotic gel and put a band-aid on it, and went off to work, off to Dude’s aunt’s house where his mother is clearing it out. (Aunt had to go into a long-term-care apartment downstate near her daughter, after a stroke left her with poor working memory, and nobody’s happy about this but the house needs to be gone through and her sister is the one to do it. And we are the ones to help her; her children live a few hundred to a thousand miles away, and wouldn’t know what to do with the things in Latvian anyway.)

Anyway. Finished with that, took a nap, ran some errands. My thumb was a bit achy under that band-aid, but I was busy. It wasn’t until I was making dinner and noticed a red line on my wrist that I realized I ought to give this more attention.

I finished making dinner, sat down, took off my watch to look at the red line a bit better. Now, I have really pale skin, and it shows red marks from everything; I expected it was red from steam from the cooking. But no, the line curved and went unaltered under where the band of my watch had been, and out the other side. It was under my skin, not the surface of it.

So I took a picture of it and sent it to an online buddy who is a nurse, who said immediately to go to urgent care, not to wait and see if it cleared up overnight because it was not going to. And now that I’ve come out the other side of this with some antibiotics, I thought I would write a little post and tell y'all what to worry about, because it was no big deal in my case but if I had waited it might well have been. So behind the cut will be a very non-gory photograph, which possibly will look more dramatic than it would on your skin because I have so little pigment in mine. But mine was a very clear textbook case, so I figure it’s a good example. Again though, no gore, so I do encourage you to look even if you’re squeamish, because it’s really good to get an idea in your mind about danger.

For the record, urgent care turned me away so I went to the ER and while I waited a long time, the staff, rushed off their feet and far too busy, was still kind and reassured me I had done exactly the correct thing in coming in. This is the kind of thing it’s trivial to fix up with a routine course of oral antibiotics if you catch it, but if it goes too long it can get into all kinds of bodily systems and become very difficult to safely eradicate, and can cause lasting, even permanent complications.

So I thought, for other dumbasses like me who would ignore a throbbing cut, here is a little PSA about Shit To Definitely Not Ignore, and thanks times several million to my online nurse buddy who told me so.

Behind the cut, a photo that does not include the actual injury or any gore or disfigurement, but very clearly shows the telltale sign, which is redness from inflammation from the infection traveling through the lymphatic system, and is like, a prime time danger sign and if you see this seek care and do not delay. I haven’t been able to find good pictures of what this looks like on darker skin, alas, but here it is on me.

[Image description: the right forearm and hand of a pale-skinned person, lying on the edge of a table with the fingers loosely closed, thumb upward. The thumb goes off the top of the frame, and a bandage is just visible circling it. A red line wavers from the side of the thumb down along the back of the heel of the hand, curves down along the inner edge of the wrist, and then curves down to the underside of the arm. Several blue veins are also dimly visible through the skin, not following quite the same path as the red line, which is wider and blurrier than they are. The red line is quite blurry and hard to see in some places, clearer and more distinct in others, and in one place clearly but briefly splits to follow two channels before reuniting into one. There’s also a faint dent visible in the skin at the side of the wrist, where the buckle of a watch was; the red line is not otherwise interrupted by where the skin had been covered by the watch.]

Again, the injury itself was a little gnarly but not anything I would have sought treatment for on its own; it was a bit sore to bend my thumb, it was getting a bit red and swollen but I had it under a bandage and wasn’t monitoring it. The red streak was what made me look, and it’s good I did. For the record, i don’t know if this is typical, but pressing down at the point right on the side of my wrist where that red streak was widest was tender, like pressing a bruise, and isn’t this morning; that was what really convinced me this was something from the inside and not a weird mark left by touching something from the outside. I don’t know if that would be universal, and it wasn’t tender along the whole length of it, but right there it’s going over bone so I could really feel it. It’s not raised at all, not a rash, it felt like bruising deep under the skin but if you pull your finger across it didn’t fade or change color or have any kind of texture to it at all. This morning it’s not tender anymore either, though the injury itself is a bit more painful than it was.

They gave me a dose of antibiotics last night around 10pm, and the streaking has faded, but the injury itself is more angry and swollen and is affecting my grip strength with that hand. I plan to follow the course of antibiotics, of course, and am grateful for modern medicine, which makes this mostly just an amusing anecdote. Who knew scraping your hand in a barn full of rat shit was dangerous! (Well, I did.)

Anyway– off to see about filling this prescription. I gotta take it four times a day but like, y'know, I can handle that in exchange for not having sepsis, LOL. (Your picture was not posted)

(no subject)

via https://ift.tt/CskxiIg

phantomrose96 https://phantomrose96.tumblr.com/post/673640041264906240/im-not-the-first-person-to-say-this-but :

I’m not the first person to say this, but sometimes I like writing things where The Twist™ can be figured out before its actual reveal.

And sure I also like Twists aren’t meant to be figured out until the end. But it’s like. That’s not a requirement. There’s room for both. They serve different purposes. Not every Twist needs to be some fight for the writer to prove how smart they are by keeping the audience in the dark until the very end.

Sometimes I wanna write a Twist that’s a teamsport actually. I’m gonna reward the reader for paying attention. I want them to be able to go “hey wait I think I know where this is going” halfway through when I’ve sprinkled out enough breadcrumbs. I want them to get excited. I want them to be able to go “I called it.” Like fuck yeah you did. You got my clues. You were paying attention. You did great. I’m shaking your hand. (Your picture was not posted)