My finger is being weird.

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I am having an issue with my right index finger. It is swollen, and painful, and I have no idea why. I’ve been just treating it gently for the last few days, but I am not seeing any improvements.

It looks like this, and hurts greatly to touch it.

Now, none of you are my doctor, and if it doesn’t seem to be improving at all in the morning, I intend to go in to the clinic and have a doc check it out. But, in the interest of taking my mind off the immediate pain, have any of you had anything like this, or does anybody have any wild guesses as to what is going on? The site I linked to for the picture lists all sorts of possibilities, but it also tells me to season my finger with turmeric, so…

2

I would soak it in hot (as you can stand) Epsom Salt water for a half hour and put anti-biotic ointment on it and wrap a Band-aid around it to sleep on.

My wife had something similar and it was a cyst and had to be cut out.

I have no problem with you ignoring this entire post.

Doctor. Tomorrow. Go.

3

IAND Mucous cyst (My wife has just had her one operated on)

4

Maturating too much, eh?

Well, who doesn’t have that problem?

5

Meh. It will fall off on its own.

6

I had a finger, and it went bad.

7

Looks like an infected hangnail to me. IANAD, bit IBMN.

ETA the cool medical name. Paronychia http://www.orthopaedicsone.com/display/MSKMed/Finger+and+hand+infections

8

Casey1505, relieve my ignorance, please: IBMN? (I be male nurse?)

9

IBMN

I bite my nuts
Infected bits may nullify
Irritable bowel must normalize
I become most nervouse

10

IANAD or any other health professional. The photo you linked (which I understand to be a finger like yours but not your actual finger) looks infected to me, because the redness indicates inflammation (a sprain would look more like a bruise). The page doesn’t say what is going on on in that photo. The fact it hasn’t improved in “a few days” is reason to go to a doctor. Do you have that same kind of redness?

Also that page is basically a vehicle for advertising. They probably paid some offshore contractor $1.50 to populate the page with crap they Googled on the internet.

11

Ich bin Mediziner nicht?

I’m just spitballing though. I don’t speak any German.

12

Should have said *but IBMN. I bite my nails. I get this occasionally. Usually a soak in peroxide and a lancing clears it up for me.

13

nuts / nails

pretty damn close.

14

This advice sounds much worse if we go with Omar Little’s first guess of “I bite my nuts.”

15

If my mouth could reach my nuts, I’d never leave the house.

16

My daughter has had these a few times. Usually soaking in Epsom’s salt helps drain it but once she was given antibiotics along with the salt soak advice. We were to come back if it didn’t go down noticeably in three days. It did though. I think the plan was to drain it if it wasn’t better.

17

I have to wonder whether the Epsom salts do anything - some articles suggest there’s no effect - but it sure couldn’t hurt. Don’t let the lack of a supply stop the warm soaks though.

Years ago, I had a cut on my foot that became infected. A friend suggested I soak it in hot salt water (table salt) - which I did, while waiting to see the doctor. It was in fact improving by the time I got in, but the doctor was skeptical of the salt’s effect and attributed it to the hot water. It certainly did no harm, and salt can have a direct antibacterial effect (hence its use in food preservation). That was with an open cut, however, not a closed swelling where salt (or epsom salt) can’t get at the actual inflamed bits.

The OP hasn’t come back - hopefully all went well when s/he went to the doctor.