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Jul. 19th, 2023 05:25 ambut, another PSA lol, i should've written the first version more concisely, but i figured a folksy story would make it easier to follow, i'm not getting a grade on this anyway
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annekewrites https://annekewrites.tumblr.com/post/723234180859822080/excellent-psa-and-ill-add-my-own-from-when-i-had :
bomberqueen17 https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/723093311763759104/cellulitis-adventures :
cellulitis adventures
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.
Keep reading https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/723093311763759104/cellulitis-adventures
Excellent PSA and I’ll add my own from when I had the recurring cellulitis from absolute hell several years ago that was THE reason I faded out of my PhD program:
Mine showed up as abscesses that got the nickname “angry purple lemons” - basically something that looked like an inordinately large blister that was also bruised, or like a bug bite/ingrown hair except then it keeps growing. Usually they were in the general underarm/bra band area, inner thigh, and one particularly awful one between my butt cheeks.
If it’s bigger than a quarter, get to urgent care ASAP. If you have a fever and one of these things, even if it isn’t that big yet or even if the fever isn’t that high, GET MEDICAL HELP.
The first bout of cellulitis, or “not technically MRSA but it’s sure acting like MRSA” I had, the first antibiotic didn’t work and by the time we had one kick in that did I was the sickest I have ever been in my adult life, including literally delirious.
My daughter also got MRSA at camp one year. The infected skin was around her thumb and it actually looked green.
Also the antibiotics used to treat this have a very good chance of making you feel like exhausted death that hasn’t been so much as decently microwaved, because everything is being rerouted to getting this crap out of your body. I probably made things worse than they needed to be by telling myself “it’s not that bad, not yet, maybe it’ll go away on its own, maybe it’s just a really bad bug bite…”
Don’t make that mistake. The longer you wait the more it sucks and the more likely it could get dangerous.
oh I should state for the record– I had MRSA once too!! and it was like. Literally no big deal, not particularly gross or weird at the time, and I never ever would have dreamed of getting someone to look at it, except coincidentally a friend of mine is a doctor and I was visiting him socially, and he was like what is on your hand. It was a tiny blister, actually it had been an eczema blister, and it was red and had pus but it was so tiny i was like okay so it’s like a zit on my finger and i was literally not paying attention to it. I cannot overstate that it did not really look like anything besides a zit, it was nothing. Everyone has scary MRSA stories and that’s why I never even thought of it for this. And he was not that kind of doctor at all, this was far outside any of his expertise. But he had seen some shit in the course of his education and work experience, and was like I do not like the look of that and recommend you get it checked out, and he never ever would say doctory things to me otherwise, so I went to my doctor who was like OH yikes, and took a culture and yeah! it was MRSA! and that tiny zit has left a tiny but profound scar on my hand! It is only luck that did not get worse either, so I should say, I’ve had just insane luck in my life a couple of times now.
It was nothing, except of course knowing it was MRSA they treated it with sulfa antibiotics instead of methicyllin which would of course categorically not work (it’s right in the name, it’s Methicyllin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, and it’s not that it’s more virulent than the regular kind of staphylococcus aureus that normally lives on your skin and can also get Ambitions and eat you, it’s just that it laughs at the most common antibiotic used to stop that process), and we found out at the end of that course that I am allergic to sulfa, which is the other cheapest easiest to get and tolerate class of antibiotics. (Have you ever had full body hives? I have! It’s not great. but it could be worse. only time i’ve ever had a nurse recoil from the sight of me, LOL.) So I am very grateful there are multiple categories of antibiotics in this modern day and age.
Hilariously everyone in the ER this last visit asked me, identically, whilst looking at my presumably-identical chart, “do you have any allergies” “yes sulfa” and they’d all squint at me and say “what happens” and now i want to know what else it could be, because of course I truthfully said “i get hives” and they wrote “hives” but like. if i’d said “i shit myself” they’d’ve been like “tough titties” and given it to me anyway? or something? i don’t know! everyone was just so identically like squint ok but how allergic and it makes me laugh to imagine what they could have meant. I’m sure it makes sense but my perspective was a bit punchy on the whole thing.
(in seriousness, my best guess is that certain allergic reactions are likely to happen across antibiotic classes and they were assessing whether I was going to be basically impossible to treat? like if sulfa gives you anaphylaxis then penicillin is going to just straight up incinerate you? idk i am very grateful that getting hives from sulfa seems to mean it’s just gonna be the sulfa that bugs me.) (Your picture was not posted)
