There's a Fungus Among Us...

...Well maybe not a fungus, but definitely an allergic reaction to something! You see I cut my thumb on a broken plate a week ago Saturday. It was just a sliver of a cute - really nothing more than a glorified paper cut. I was very good and immediately washed it and put neosporin and a band-aid on it. (Mom taught me well.) But by Sunday it was itching, by Monday it was swollen, and by Tuesday night it hurt like crazy, itched, was covered in tiny blisters, and turning purplish-black. Throughout all this I was fastidious about washing it with anti-bacterial soap and regularly changing my band-aid with fresh dousings of nesporin, but to no avail. So Wednesday morning I went to the doctor. He said that it was a severe allergic reaction. And based on the level of reaction he believed that I was have a triple allergic reaction to: something on the broken plate, and that's right, you guessed it - the neosporin and the band-aid! All that time I thought I was doing good, but in fact I was making it worse. His instructions were to take copious amounts of benadryl, wash it with cool water and no soap (see even the soap was bad!), apply a prescription of steroid cream 3 times a day and keep it covered. (But naturally not with a band-aid). About three years ago I learned that I'm allergic to latex - but it's a new enough allergy that I always forget. And I've been using band-aids my whole life with no reaction. But apparently this time there were enough allergens going on that the amount of latex in the band-aid only added to my problems. So in the future only latex-free band-aids and no more neosporin, only bacitracin. Go figure...

The first two pictures were taken last Thursday. And if you can believe this, the pictures actually don't do it justice. It looks much worse in person. You can ask anyone.

And this was taken today. It still looks pretty crazy, but surprisingly feels much better and is also less swollen... So that's nice.