It all started about a month and a half ago, about a week before we took a little trip down to St. George for my mom’s B-Day. My right thumb started to get a little red and sore down around the cuticle. I pretty much thought nothing of it, threw some neosporin and a bandaid on it and life went on as it normaly does.
after a couple more days, it started to puff a little, and it was secreting this yellow stuff that would dry out right there in the cuticle, so I just kept a bandaid on it and the neosporin just kept on drawing out the infection, but it seemed to be never ending.
Now as a side note, I have no clue what i ever did to it, it just started to get red and soon got infected, and pretty soon it was becoming more of a nusance than anything. It was hurting like no other any time I would bump it, or use it.
Things didn’t look good for my poor little thumb and I started to worry even more about my thumb nail. I could kind of pull down on the skin and it would expose this little arched piece of skin that was kind of protruding out from my nail bed. I couldn’t tell if it was skin that was growing over top of my nail, or if it had come through the base of my nail and was growing up from underneath… only time would tell.
So about a week and a half after St. George, I was at work and looking at my infected appendage, and I realized that it wasn’t getting any better.
It was a tuesday night, I got home and told Anisha that I thought that I Should go to the doctor so that night we packed up the kids and took off to the Orem/Lindon Instacare where we waited and waited. “Brad Hill” was finally the name called out as I arose and helped anisha pry the crying kids off of the toys, and we headed into the Dr.’s office.
She looked at my thumb moved it around a bit and had some big name for it, she said that the skin protruding out was some type of skin that is growing in reaction to the infection and that it was normal. She said it looked ok, and that her only concern was that the infection was growing under the skin and that she would check it out.
She also informend me that the only procedure there was for this kind of thing was to take a needle and poke it in there, move it around, and make sure that it was all separated, and to pop any puss pockets cause they wouldn’t drain on their own. So we went into the little procedure room, and Anisha sat there with the kids for a while and it just wasnt working so she took them out and got the stroller and took them for a little walk.
The nurse suddenly pulled out this needle that looked like one of those needles you inject seasoning into turkeys with. (it wasn’t really that big har har…) and she said, “OK we can try this with or without numbing it” I was down for an adventure so I said let’s try without first. She had me squeeze my thumb to try to get some puss out for a culture, and as I did that the pain was so excruciating I could hardly handle it. She asked and I told her it was like a 8 or 9.5 on the pain scale, pretty unbearable, but we got the culture.
Then she started to stick the needle in, and as I layed down I sat right back up, because it was sending pain through my whole body! I said, “uh… let’s numb it!” She told me that this numbing shot would probably hurt really bad, and that she would have to put one into both sides of my thumb, I said ok and she started sticking me, and I could barely feel the sticks compared to the pain already felt in my thumb!
After the anisthetic set in she started pressing on my thumb and it was still killing, so she put two more shots in the sides of my thumb, this time a little closer to the problem. After pushing on my thumb a second time and finding out that it still didn’t quite make it to where it was hurting, she stuck the needle straight into the infection and that did the trick!
She proceeded to poke and separate and pop, and within 1 minute was done. She then wrapped my thumb up so that it looked like the balloon that it felt like with all the numbing she did to it, gave me some anti-biotics, and sent me on my way.
It’s been about 3 weeks since it all, and this is what my thumb looks like:
So my nail will evenutally fall off, but here are some good signs:
You can see the new baby nail growing in! I’m not too excited to loose my nail, and all but there will probably be some cool pictures!
That is my story of Thumb Wars, I’ll keep you posted!
Brad's Work, Hill-Haps | Anisha | 
November 16, 2008 10:24 am | 
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