My Technicolor Finger

Here’s a bit of medical information for you: You can get an infection in your fingertip - an infection near or under your finger nail - even without an obvious hangnail or cut! The condition, known as paronychia, can be very painful. I should know - because I was diagnosed with it yesterday!

It all started with the side of my finger tip starting to hurt, for no reason I could discern. I hadn’t jammed or slammed it, and I had no hang nail or other dead skin that I had tugged - my fingertip and fingernail, as best as I could tell, were intact.

In fact there was no visible sign of trauma or damage at all - no bruising, no swelling, nothing.
But it kept hurting, and eventually it started throbbing. So badly that it kept me awake, or woke me up, for two nights. By the middle of the second night I figured it was time to see a doctor, which I did as soon as I could in the morning. By this time my finger tip was swollen, but that was still the only visible symptom.

The doctor diagnosed it as paronychia - an infection near the fingernail - and loaded me up with antibiotics, and prescribed warm epsom salt and water soaks four times a day, and Advil for the pain.

After the first epsom salts soak, my finger showed a neon green bit around the nail, and some lovely bruise-purple tones around that.

See for yourself - and be glad that the picture isn’t in good focus!

And I won’t even tell you what came out when I lanced the neon green with a syringe..yuck!

So, if your finger tip starts hurting for no apparent reason, and doesn’t stop - or show another obvious cause - get it checked out. Because an unchecked internally contained infection can get pretty serious.