Bulldozer00's Blog

At some point last Sunday I noticed some pain in my right thumb. The pain was localized to a small area where the nail boundary interfaces with the skin. The pain worsened and expanded outward during the day but I didn’t think much of it since it wasn’t dominating my consciousness.

When I woke up on Monday the pain was still expanding and my hitchhiking thumb looked like this:

Even though there weren’t any obvious patches of pus in the area, I started mining for its oozy white presence by gently puncturing the skin in several places with a hydrogen peroxide dipped needle. It hurt so much that I postponed further testing until I could actually see pus pockets sometime in the future.

Even though the pain was getting worse and the coverage area was expanding, I thought the infection wasn’t that bad and it would self-heal without any external medical treatment. As you may know, BD00 isn’t a doctor but he thinks he is after observing and experiencing four years of various cancer treatments. 😂

So, the pain kept getting worse until it was a continuous throbbing menace that kept me up most of Monday night. I swear I could feel the thump-thump of my heartbeat in my thumb every time it throbbed with pain.

On Tuesday afternoon I heeded the advice from a friend’s doctor boyfriend and headed to a Wellcare urgent care center.

The doctor looked at it and gently pressed on it looking for any liquid discharge. She decided not to lance the injury and wrote scripts for 7 days worth of Keplex antibiotic capsules and an antibiotic ointment. I noticed the antibiotics working rather quickly. I slept through Tuesday night without too much pain and on Wednesday the pain was much less intense. It also didn’t feel like the infection was expanding any further.

On Thursday I had an appointment with my oncologist and I showed him my thumb. Even though I told him I was on the mend, he was concerned that the infection was perhaps too deep and it could start affecting the physical function of my thumb by eating through ligaments/cartilage. Thus, he setup an appointment with an orthopedic doctor for Friday morning.

Of course, I had noticed the functional deterioration in my thumb already because, among other extremely simple activities, I couldn’t wipe my ass at all with it because the pain was so intense that I had to use my opposite hand. Oops, TMI? (A nonfunctional thumb sounds like a good bit for a Larry David “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode.)

After a visit to the orthopedic doctor and an X-ray of the thumb, he sent me on my way with instructions to stay the course with the pills and ointment and a periodic dip in a cup of peroxide.

Here’s the latest pic showing the infection drying up and withering away.

Before reading any further, please recite the title of this post really fast three times in a row.

I had my quarterly brain MRI last week followed by a meeting with my neurosurgeon and his nurse. Since the overall finding in the report was “no significant interval change“, meaning virtually no change from my October 15th MRI, the meeting was short and sweet. Phew! Another three month reprieve from the EOAM!

However, when I read the report in detail over the weekend I noticed a peculiar line in it……

Since I never saw anything like it on any previous MRI, I called my neurosurgeon’s office and left a message asking if the peculiar line in the report was a mistake, or just an area so minor that there is nothing to worry about. Should I do or take something different and/or be on the lookout for symptoms that indicate the “infarct” is getting worse?

The nurse called me back later and essentially said that it’s par for the course for my condition and age. And you know what? I think she’s absolutely right. Compared to the elephants in the room, you know, those three “enhancing hemorrhagic masses“, a “chronic left cerebellar lacunar infarct” is a pipsqueak. They both sound pretty scary though, dontcha think?