Finger Foo

[hrj]

I'm one of those people who bruises if a butterfly brushes past me, so I'm pretty used to noticing odd purple spots without remembering when I bumped into something. But I'm having no luck at all figuring out what I did to the tip of my left middle finger. At first I thought I'd clipped a little too close when I was cutting my nails and gotten an infected hangnail or something -- it was swollen and warm and painful, but no radiating streaks, no oozing or pus or other serious infection symptoms, so I figured I'd just leave it alone to get better. But after a couple days it was behaving more like a burn -- sort of shiny and tender on the surface but no obvious "center" to it all. Except I think I would have noticed splashing something hot on it, and there isn't the sensitivity to temperature that you usually get with a burn, and that wouldn't explain the slight swelling of the whole fingertip. There's one little tiny red pin-spot, which made me think either a staple puncture (a hazard of pulling staples to photocopy documents -- but see above comments on infection) or maybe a bite of some kind. The problem with the bite theory is that it hasn't itched at all (which a regular spider bite always does) and the reaction isn't severe enough for it to be one of the really bad spiders. Odd, very odd.

Comments

[wulfsdottir.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a localized infection, or like you have a nasty sliver. Those can rather suddenly turn into blood poisoning, as my mother-in-law discovered after a very minor mishap with a staple on a package of spinach. If it's been a while since your last tetanus booster, expect that to come up when you go see the sawbones. Oh, yes, and the co-pay for the office visit comes out cheaper than the hospital bills, so, if it were me, I'd go sooner and feel silly, rather than wait and feel stupid. Of course, I got the wonderful treat of an ER visit last Friday, so I'm still feeling that burn.