I am having a pretty bad day.

Why? It’s simple. I have a finger infection, and it seems to be getting worse, and it’s becoming more painful, and the pain is really wearing me down.

Plus, I have a bunch of writing to do today, and the pain has gotten to the point where I can’t use that finger at all, and so I have o hold the infected finger up and use my middle finger alone to type with that hand, and it really slows me down. It also makes typing seem like a heck of a lot more work, and of course, I am making far more typing mistakes this way.

But mostly, it is the pain that is getting me down and putting my mood into a bad place. In a resting state, the finger merely throbs slowly and painfully. But that is only if I am sitting absolutely still, I am not moving any part of that finger at all, and it is not touching anything.

And of course, that does not happen too often. Simple things like reading, cooking, or even just walking around involve moving the finger somewhat. Even the way I am typing right now moves the finger around a fair bit. And when it moves, it throbs harder and I can really feel the pain from both the throbbing and the inflammation, as well as the tightness of the skin from all that swelling.

The finger is now distinctly discolored and swollen, with a reddish purple tinge and a bulbous appearance. I am hoping that the swelling is mostly inflammation rather than a buildup of fluid, If it’s inflammation, it won’t get much worse and I can safely leave it till Tuesday when I see my doctor.

But if it’s fluid, it will just keep getting worse and I will have to get it taken care of pronto before it does something horrible like burst, and maybe wreck the finger and/or put infectious gunk into my bloodstream and cause much worse problems than a mere painful finger.

Having a vivid imagination and just enough medical knowledge to be dangerous is such a nasty combo.

So tomorrow will be the determinant. If the discoloration gets worse, if the swelling gets worse, if the pain gets worse, I will consider getting Joe to take me to the emergency room. Odd to end up there when I was just there on Thursday for admitting to the sleep study. But life it like that sometimes.

Honestly, a big part of me wants to go there right now just based on the pain. It’s not the severity of the pain that is driving me crazy, although at times it is fairly bad. Especially when I accidentally whack my infected finger against something, which happens three or four times a day. That really hurts like a son of a bitch and his three biggest puppies, let me tell yeah.

But no, it’s not the intensity of the pain, it’s the constancy. It hurts all the god damned time with no respite at all. I don’t have any pain relievers to take, and I can’t afford to go get any, or to look for a topical anti inflammatory pain reliever of some sort. No doubt, one of the pain relief creams or other solutions would do the trick. But those require money.

So all I can do is suffer, and that is what is wearing me down. Long term pain is a serious bitch. That animal inside us will always see all pleasure as reward and all pain as punishment, and so long term unalleviated pain cannot help but make us feel like we are bad animals being punished for something, and we do not know what. And pain without meaning or possibility of relief is the definition of depression.

And so I feel that sick animal feeling, like I want to just curl up in a dark corner somewhere and whimper. I am already prone to depression and so a (relatively) small thing like this is worse for me because my mood, and especially my positive mood, is hardly strong or stable enough to withstand it.

So we shall see how this all turns out. Probably all that it will amount to is a short, painful, unpleasant interlude of illness like having a three day flu or a minor strain, and then it will be taken care of and I will go back to normal life with great relief.

And that relief will fade over time, as it must for things to go back to normal, but for a while, I will thank my stars every day for my lack of throbbing pain in my finger.

Until then, though, I will just have to cope. After I am done writing this diary entry, I will attempt to rest for a while, then write a few other things I have promised to write before the end of today.

I am glad I have this forum to use to express my feelings. It helps a lot. I am not temperamentally inclined to vent my feelings via grumpiness, as so many less self-aware (and possibly more healthy) people seem to do. I hold myself to an extremely high standard of self-control on that score.

And I have not been able to seek solace and sympathy from my Internet friends either, because they are all on IRC (I am such a dinosaur) and IRC means typing and typing, right now, is hard.

Says something about your life when a finger infection keeps you from talking to your friends,

So being able to pour it out here helps a lot. I feel a lot less freaked out about the whole thing now that I have once more spilled my guts onto the page and put it up on the web to dry.

Tomorrow I will decide whether this damn thing warrants a trip to the emergency room or not. Hopefully not. It’s a depressing place to be.

But what the heck. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.