What Kind Of Doctor Do Should I See? (Possible Flesh-Eating Virus)

Factual Questions
1

Hah! Got your attention!

Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not seeking medical advice, per se. I’m looking for advice on who to see for some medical advice.

My tale of woe:

A day and a half ago, Thursday afternoon, I noticed a small cut on the pad of my left thumb. It looked like a tiny paper cut. I had no idea where it might have come from. I ignored it. By the end of the day, it kind of hurt.

Friday morning, it seemed to have enlarged slightly, and hurt more. So I put some triple antibiotic ointment and a band-aid on it. It bugged me a little all day. I wondered if I had a splinter or something, so I poked with a tweezers to no avail.

I woke up very early this Saturday morning, and it hurts more. It is swollen and red. The redness is starting to extend up my thumb toward my hand.

I know you’re probably wondering what the big deal is, but something about this is weird. I get cuts fairly regularly, and this isn’t a normal cut. My spidey sense is tingling.

I’m guessing that I probably got some little splinter something deep in there, and it’s infected. Or maybe I have the flesh-eating virus. :: cue spooky music :: Hey, every time I see something about it on TV, they say "it started with this innocuous little cut, which quickly got swollen and red, and the redness started traveling toward my heart… :: cue thunderclap sound effect :: Okay, so it’s probably a splinter, but it seems to be something that a doc will need to remove.

So I’m going to have it looked at. The question is–by who?

I’m just really kind of stumped as to what kind of doctor I should see. Especially given that it’s the weekend, now. My regular “primary physician” is an internist, and not especially patient or nice with her sniffles and sore throats type patients. I can’t see her digging around in my thumb looking for a splinter.

FWIW, I have excellent medical insurance, and can see any type of doc at any time, so there’s no restrictions there.

Thanks in advance.

2

Go buy some Iodine & use it.

Antiseptics should be used on infected wounds.

Then, bandage the thing. Basic First Aid/Hygene teaches that keeping your wounds clen & bandaged takes care of ordinary injuries, in most cases.

My own experience with antibiotic ointments is that they are worth sh*t.

Go to your family MD, or if you feel the problem is bad, an Urgent Care or ER.

If you don’t get better, can I have your CD collection?

3

For me, this would signal that it’s time to look for a new doctor. After all, except for my kidney stuff, for which I have a urologist, and my girly stuff, for which I have an OB/GYN, just about anything I might need a general doc for is the “sniffles and sore throat” kind of stuff. Having said that, though, he (she?) is your doctor, and if you need to see a doctor, go, and just deal with your doctor’s lack of bedside manner.

4

Tale a good course in First Aid so you can properly take care of minor cuts and scrapes.

How about the ER?

ASAP!

5

An internist should be able to clean and drain an infected cut, if it’s not too deep or near any vital structures. If she can’t or doesn’t want to, she will definitely be able to refer you to someone who can (probably a general surgeon) and load you up with antibiotics in the meantime.

So call the internist. NOW. If she’s not available go to the ER. Don’t screw around with infected wounds.

Oh, and for future reference, don’t poke around for splinters. Cuts can get infected whether they have splinters or not, and poking for a splinter (if you don’t have medical training or good knowledge of sterile technique) can introduce infection where there wasn’t any. You could also deepen the cut or poke a hole in something important, like a blood vessel. If you don’t like the look of a cut or it isn’t healing properly, take it to a doctor.

6

IANAD, nor should this be taken as medical advice.

I may be misreading this, but travelling redness is a hallmark of a blood infection. Go to the ER, especially if the redness continues to move.

7

I say got to a doctor ASAP as well. But, flesh eating disease is something that kind of freaks me out. I remember reading one case where they said their symptoms a day or two after the cut were:

  1. Red, “hot feeling” infected area that kept expanding.
  2. Feeling like they had a flu.
8

Don’t wait until Monday. The symptoms you describe sound mighty scary, and they sound like something you probably can’t treat at home. If your doc doesn’t work on Saturday, go to a doc-in-a-box (immediate care clinic) or an emergency room.

I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen a few hand wounds that went bad quickly. Besides flesh-eating virus, there are several bacterial infections that can seriously mess you up for several days.

9

This is like asking what kind of a doctor you should see if you think you’re having a heart attack.

If you really have “flesh-eating bacteria” (necrotizing fasciitis) it’s a big medical emergency and you need to see an emergency room doctor.

Whatever you do, don’t take medical advice from people that don’t know the difference between bacteria and viruses.

10

Amen. Not to be a scare-monger, but you might want to review this thread if you need any convincing. “Streaks of red” moving towards the center of your body? Not with the good.

11

IAAD, but I don’t give medical advice on line. However, I will point out a general principles:

  1. Increasing pain, swelling, and redness are all signs of an infection that the body is not controlling well.

  2. There are two basic treatment modalities for localized infections, surgical and medical. Surgical treatment has as its objective removing any foreign objects, dead tissue, or pus so that there is no area without a good blood supply. (Bacteria can grow around foreign objects (e.g., splinters), dead tissue (e.g., crushed, burned or otherwise severely injured tissue), and in pus pockets (e.g., boils) but have a much harder time of it in healthy tissue with a good blood supply. As an adjunct to surgical treatment, medical treatment of infections by administering antimicrobials helps by killing bacteria. However, it is not a substitute for surgical treatment and it will not cure infections by itself. What antibiotics do is kill or slow down the reproduction of bacteria so that the immune system can get the upper hand; if a person’s immune system isn’t working, antimicrobials will not save them.

  3. In my experience, health care providers are best at doing those tasks that they do most often and the health care providers who treat the most acute infections are probably people who work in emergency rooms.

  4. It is my understanding that insurance coverage for emergency room visits is often better than for other types of health care.

  5. “Antiseptics should be used on infected wounds.” If an infection is under the skin, pouring antiseptics on the skin is of no use.

  6. “Then, bandage the thing.” If there is pus forming under the skin, then it needs to get out (see #2 above); a bandage will only impede the drainage of the pus.

  7. “…poking for a splinter (if you don’t have medical training or good knowledge of sterile technique) can introduce infection where there wasn’t any.” If there is a rip roaring infection going on somewhere, it is hard to believe that inserting a non-sterile (but clean) implement could contaminate the pus.

  8. Although most infected fingers do not require professional care, some do.

12

I also came in to recommend a “Doc in the Box” (PriMed, Med1, etc.). You don’t need an appointment, you don’t have to wait as long as at the ER and cleaning an infected would (which does need to be done by a medical professional) should be well within their level of ability. They have “real doctors” (except for a few that have nurse practitioners, but it will be stated) and they’re covered by most major insurance companies with a $25 co-pay and if you don’t have insurance they’ll be a lot cheaper usually than your internist or the ER. The quality of care I’ve gotten in these places is as good as at my regular doctor or the ER and didn’t take 2 weeks for an appointment or 3 hours to see the doctor, and it sounds like what you have needs medical attention but not a specialist.

13

Green Bean, I had exactly the symptoms that you describe. Thumb quickly got painfully swollen and I couldn’t even bend it. The pain was also bad enough that I started to get a little woozy.

Do the sensible thing and Go See A Doctor Right Away. What’s the copay on your health insurance? $20 or so? It’s just not worth poking at it yourself when a doctor (or internist or whoever) can fix it in a few minutes.

In my case it was an infection - drained by the doctor (extremely gross) and then some home care as instructed (involved antibiotics and keeping it draining, also gross). Very simple stuff, I spent maybe 30 minutes in his office including filling out some forms, and it was taken care of.

14

If it’s flesh eating virus, then you want to head to the ER right now. My nephew almost died of this and minutes count when it really starts going.

15

If you haven’t gone into your doctor, go to the ER, now! Redness traveling up a limb is a sign of bad infection (It might be this, might not. My husband got that from a tick bite last summer. He went to the ER over it, because the red line became apparent after office hours.) that needs IMMEDIATE treatment. Go, now! If it isn’t getting better with the medicines they give you, pursue the idea of having it tested to see what kind of infection it is.

16

Go to the doctor NOW. ER if necessary.

Everything I’ve heard about the flesh-eating disease says that it is freaking fast when it gets going. Wikipedia says 3cm per hour. :eek: Learn from the example of Lucien Bouchard, who only lost a leg.

17

Point of note: There is no such thing as a flesh eating virus in mammals. (There is, apparently, a family of necrotic viruses that can infect legumes and maize, but they don’t feed on animal tissue.) There are numerous bacteria, including the streptococcal bacteria and members of the Clostridium family which can cause wet and gas gangrene or the above-mentioned necrotizing fasciitis, but there are no viruses that literally eat or decompose flesh. There are hemorrhagic viruses such as the Ebola, Marburg, and, Lassa viruses that can cause tissue breakdown, bleed-out, and even literal liquification of internal organs rendering them prone to bacterial infection, but you’re not going to pick these up from a simple cut.

Blood poisoning (bacteremia), on the other hand, can be a concern with any cut, and once bacteria have entered the bloodstream in significant quantity treating or sterilizing the entry wound is no longer effective. If you suspect infection you should seek treatment immediately, up to and including the emergency room (though an urgent care-type center will probably be quicker). Any competent physician, regardless of specialty, should be able to diagnose the problem or take a blood sample and have it analyzed.

Anecdote that isn’t meant to inflame fears but: A friend of my grandfather’s–I believe he was a Force Recon Marine–spent some time in The Bad Place during the late Sixties. While there, he participated in some “advanced position surveillance work” which means exactly what you think it means. Mostly, this involved moving through the jungle, and since one can’t exactly move along the roads, they’d generally follow streams and rivers. Athough he suffered no injuries due to armed conflict–it was strictly “look in and come back” type of job–he did get a few scratches which were exposed to the river water. Three days after his return, he was laid flat in the infirmary of a ship, where he spent the better portion of the next six months (he was eventually transferred to the Phillipines, which to hear him speak of it, was worse than being onboard a ship) owing to a systemic blood infection.

It’s not something to fool around with.

Stranger

18

Does this look like blood poisoning to anyone else, or am I on crack?

Green Bean, if your next post to this thread doesn’t describe an ER visit or similar I’m going to be very disappointed in you.

19

Post #6 implies we’re both on crack.

20

Go to a doctor. My husband had a tiny scrape on his leg that turned into a vey nasty infection, which, against my wishes, he ‘let go’ for about a month. He ended up in the ER on IV antibiotics (2 seperate rounds of those, 6 days each) and a few antibiotic Rxs, not to mention the creams, etc. The infection spread up his entire leg, onto his torso and then moved to his arms and hands before he went to the ER. He was in serious pain, had major swelling in all those areas and was a tad bit miserable.
He has learned his lesson well.

Don’t let it go. Go to a doctor!