Infection! (Some kinda-gross pics, too!)

After my last post I was hoping that this winter was going to an easy one on my skin.  Well, hoping didn’t work out very well.  As the title of this post says I ended up with an infection, mostly on the right ring finger but there were smaller infections on many of my fingers.

Here are some pics:

1. The infection starts and no matter what I try it just doesn’t cut it. (I tried antiseptic solution, antibiotic ointment, eventually peroxide, soaking it in warm water…)
2. The infection gets IN my finger causing redness, pain and swelling.
3. Look at that swelling.

This infection was fast and caught me off guard.  It went from my usually dry, cracked and a bit infected (but manageable) finger to needing a doctors visit literally over night.  I watched the red infection line go down my finger and called my doctors office.  Long story short I was prescribed these to take for 7 days:

7 days of 4 pills a day…. yuck.

The script was written as “Keflex” which after doing an internet search I learned that it is used to treat skin infections.

I am not a person who enjoys pharmaceuticals so agreeing to antibiotics for a silly skin infection always makes me somewhat grumpy.  But, I knew that this was getting bad so I sucked it up and took them.  They made me tired but didn’t mess with my stomach like other antibiotics have in the past.  In the end, they did the trick and slowly my finger started to get better.  Although, I had to add in Fucidin cream into my nightly routine to help out.   I wish I had had this cream when the infection was starting as I have a feeling it would of ended differently.

Here are some pictures of the finger as it was healing:

1. 3 days into the treatment.
2. The day I finished the treatment.
3. Today – 5 days after treatment was finished.

So, the big infection is gone and I am much more comfortable however it appears that my nail has been compromised as a result of the infection in the nailbed.  I am not sure what this means but as you can see in pictures 2 and 3 above it isn’t going to be comfortable as the nail grows out.  But, as always I will post an update.