I'm All Thumb

I might have to go to the emergency room tomorrow! Shit! Thursday night, my left thumb started to hurt, and it got stiff and crunchy at the last joint. Then when I woke up Friday it was frozen stiff and sore and swollen. I took the day off to self-medicate, but here it is Saturday night, and it is still big and painful and now it has some fever.

Either: the sprain I got breakdancing over a year ago actually chipped the bone and I have a bone spur, or, the cactus/mesquite spine I took to that knuckle over 5 years ago finally decided to get infected and/or come out, or the little knife wound I got cooking two weeks which seemed to heal just fine actually didn't, or, when I was under the house earlier this week or in bed a spider bit me on the thumb.

Too many variables! Ice, painkillers, aspirin, echinacea, reiki, and ichthammol and it is still screamming with pain!

I have been to the emergency room on my own behalf only once, but I left before I got treatment so I didn't get a big bill. I'm kind of scared that an emergency room doctor will be as clueless as me, and will give me antibiotics which won't work. I CAN'T take antibiotics anymore unless it's life-threatening, my immune system is all crapped out by antibiotic abuse in my youth.

So now I go to bed with the ichthammol on, hoping it will draw out the poison/infection/foreign matter like it has done for me so well in the past.