Friday morning I didn't feel so hot but I headed off to clinical. About an hour or so later I was putting on or taking off gloves for some form of gyn exam and I realized my right hand felt like it was on fire. I glanced at it and immediately thought to myself "you have to be kidding." It was red and puffy. Next, I pulled out a mini purple sharpie I had in my pocket and traced around the margins of the redness.
I have to point out a couple of things about this...First of all I'm right handed, so using my left hand to draw on my right hand made me look like a toddler had scribbled on my hand. Not very professional. Second of all, speaking of toddlers...let me just say I should probably have thought what I was doing through better at the time because as I was drawing on my hand I looked up to see the toddler in my current appointment watching carefully, then smile shyly, and then even bigger as we shared a secret...I was obviously doing something naughty. Something I fear that toddler went home and repeated. How professional of me. *groan*
After the appointment I asked the midwife I was working with if she minded looking at my hand. She agreed with my diagnosis, cellulitis. Basically an infection of the soft tissue. My hand was warm to the touch, but I was pretty sure I didn't have a fever. Yes, I was in a clinic, but I didn't feel like taking my temp. Don't worry I got razzed about that plenty later on. Anyway, the midwife's exact words were "you're going to need to get that looked at." Of course.
I thought about for a few more appointments and then called my NP. I was already playing phone tag with her about scheduling an appointment with her after my scans on Friday so I can get some results right away without waiting over the weekend. Of course the biggest issue with this is if these scans don't go well, then I still have to wait until Monday for some sort of plan. The way I see it, I'll still be waiting until Monday for an official plan but now there is a chance I'll get some sleep next weekend and won't cry the whole way through. A chance...
Of course this is where I point out that I found an enlarged lymph node near my left clavicle Friday night. It feels like a marble. Geoff and I have speculated over it all weekend and finally decided to write it off to my recent sinus infection. I'm hoping we were right and not just kidding ourselves because it does seem to be smaller tonight but it's hard to tell for sure since I'm pretty sunburned right now.
So cellulitis...
Eventually the phone tag ended and I took the last appointment of the day, 3pm Friday. This allowed me to see a few more appointments and salvage some of my day with my very unprofessional purple scribbled hand. As it turns out, it did appear to be cellulitis. Which in case you are wondering hurts like hell.
I don't think it looks too bad, esp. after a few days of antibiotics, but there is still a nice red lump that feels like a hammer just slammed down on it. It's also still a little puffy and warm. Grrr. On the plus side, my NP is awesome and worked with me to find antibiotics that would also work on my sinus infection. Hallelujah! This is most wonderful because my stupid sinus infection was making life miserable! I had constant headaches and all my teeth hurt, and I couldn't taste or smell anything for days.
Since I can't currently take Ibuprofen, I've been taking Norco (the narcotic) I've talked about before, to tolerate life. Unfortunately I was taking 1.5 pills every 4-6 hours and that is way too much for me so my brain was complete mush. I couldn't think straight for anything. I'm kind of a wuss about pain meds.
I'm happy that I no longer need to take anything more than 1 Norco at a time and that I can stretch it out longer than that. I'm even more happy to be able to taste and smell again, but I wish the hand stuff would be done. I also kind of wish we knew what caused it. There was an old IV site in the vicinity, so that's the likely explanation.
Regardless we managed to have a really nice weekend which I'll include pics of in my next post and now I'm wiped and taking it easy while Geoff wrangles the two wild beasts into pjs and bed (they'll come see me for story time).
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