The Staph

WARNING***This post contains graphic, well, just really disgusting images.

This post is dorky. But I know dorky people that wanted to see these pics.
You know who you are. This post is for you.

About 2 weeks after I had James, I yanked one of those annoying, deep, hangnails off.

People do that all the time, right?

BAD IDEA.

It got infected.

The following images are the stages of the infection...these hurt just to look it.

I'll tell you I would have rather given birth 10x than have this again.

It was one of the most painful things I've ever experienced.
And I've had some pretty painful things happen to me in my time. 

I guess your fingertips are some of the most sensitive parts of your body, 

which explains the excruciating pain I had from this. I felt so dumb

for being such a baby about this...but seriously it killed! Everything about it hurt so bad.

Here she is...the beginning...

 Then the swelling got worse and worse.

 This (below) was probably the most painful and worst point of the infection.

I couldn't bend or straighten my finger. It was swollen to the knuckle. 

And it just seemed like the "stuff inside" (I hate gross words), had no more room to swell.

 Would you believe that day I laid on my couch all day, in pain? 

We thought I might loose my finger nail at this point.

And then I was going to be one of those people, who have a freaky finger. :(

Then the "gross stuff" started to surface. Matt came home and tried lancing it a few times

to relieve the pressure (I had to bite a rag when he did it, I'm tell you it KILLED!!!)

 Oh and by the way, I was on 2 different antibiotics during this whole fiasco.

The next series of photos could be even more disgusting, but I'll tell ya, 

it felt 500x better from here on out.

I had to soak it in salt water and then "drain" it (...barf) all throughout the day.

 And it slowly went down and started to heal. 

I wanted to leap with joy, even though my finger was looking pretty freaky.

(Matt made me bandage it up in public, because it was too gross looking).

I know this last photo is GROSS, but man it felt so good, even though it's scary.

By the way, from start to finish, this was about a month's time.

And I'm pleased to tell you that after that it was like this I had a new finger again.

My finger healed and the skin was baby soft.

And believe it or not, I think my nail is a prettier shape now.

Okay. That was a weird post for me.

Lesson to be learned. DON'T pull (or bite) off those hangnails, be patient with those

annoying things and clip them off later, like a lady.