So Shannon had an inflammed thumb for a couple days last week, due to hangnail gone kind of bad. On Wednesday, it looked really bad and infected, so I told him it needed to be seen soon - like, Thursday. Thursday evening, after I woke up and was getting ready for work, he still hadn't been to his doctor. The thumb looked worse, and it was very tender, redish-purple, shiny, and swollen. It appeared to me to worsen in the hour or so I was up, and we decided, at 5:45, to take him to the ER and have it looked at. Techinically, you are supposed to call in by 5pm at my hopsital if you can't work, but I was too concerned about it. The pictures don't really do it justice, but here they are, taken on my Treo in the ER:
The above is a comparison of his two thumbs, so you can see how ugly and swollen his left one was. The ER doc lanced it and cleaned it, and the tech dressed it in this massive white bandage that made him look like a professional hitchhiker, and we got a prescription for oral antibiotics. He also got a prescription for Vicodin, but once the pressure was relieved, he wasn't in so much pain anymore. The thumb is still red and irritated, and not terribly pretty, but he's not in pain and has full range of motion again. And, thankfully, the "thumb" puns have stopped as well.
2 comments:
Ahh, yes. I've seen this condition before. That is what happens when people pick their nose and forget to wash. I'm impressed that he uses his thumb; seems painful to me but Go Shannon.
Sometimes the boogers are so big that I need more leverage. I grab my face with my other fingers and that way I can use my thumb much more effectively. It's not pretty, but it gets me breathing better in no time.
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