Theme
6:51am January 19, 2015

Can anyone recognize what kind of skin infection this is?

Warning:  Don’t go under the more tag if you feel queasy or otherwise highly disturbed by pictures of medical problems, in this case a skin infection.

Things you should know:

  • It’s already been seen by a doctor.  Our plan is to treat it topically, see if the redness goes down, and if it doesn’t (or if it starts growing again), only then go for the antibiotics.  I take a lot of antibiotics, so any amount I can avoid is worth the risk provided it’s not some kind of horrible infection.  And my doctor is good, and has saved the life of a friend who really did have a horrible skin infection that would’ve killed her within hours, so… yeah.  Don’t think I’m being neglected medically because I’m not.
  • The red area around the circular part at the middle has gone down considerably since using a lot of the antibiotic ointment every day.  It used to be at least five times this size.
  • This originated in a cat scratch.  It was not Fey’s fault.  Usually it is, but not this time.  She tried to jump onto the bed, missed, and grabbed my leg for support, digging her claws through my jeans and into the skin.  This is the only scratch out of several that got infected, and I have no idea how it turned big and circular.
  • I rarely get infected cat scratches (bites are another matter) but I’m on immunosuppressants (CellCept, dexamethasone) so all bets are off.
  • If you tell me to “get rid of” Fey I will block you.

Anyway, on to the photos.  My eyes are worn out and I’m not capable of looking through Google images right now for a good match for this.  

So… go past the “Read More” at your own risk.  I don’t think it really looks that bad, but I have a very high tolerance for looking at gnarly wounds (especially in photos) without having a strong reaction.  And this isn’t even that gnarly compared to some.  But I honestly don’t know how to gauge what is really nasty-looking and what is tame in general for most people.  Especially since my mom worked in a hospital and brought her stories to the dinner table, even the really gross ones, and we all learned not to give a crap.  So I’m just warning in general.

Also apologies for image quality, the photos were taken in Photo Booth and then modified (mostly sharpened) so you could see certain aspects of them better.  This was in a dark room, too.

This is a view directly above the infection, which looks like a nickel-sized cheese pizza with reddened skin around it.
This is a skin infection I’ve got on my leg. It’s circular, nickel-sized, and looks kind of like cheese pizza most of the time – yellor or white stuff, with pink or red bumps popping out. Around the edges is a red area, bigger in some areas than others, marked with a pen so we can see whether it’s growing or shrinking.
This is a view a little to the side of the skin infection on my leg. There's a nickle-sized circular area in the middle thatlooks for all the world like a cheese pizza,
Another view of my skin infection on my leg, this one from an angle. I sharpened the image so you can see the red bumps in the center area better.
Blurry picture of part of a skin infection on my leg.
An extreme close-up of the same infection, so it’s blurry but you can still see more detail about the edge of the center, including the pink bumps protruding from the white and yellow stuff.
So… anyone have any idea what this could be?  The doctor didn’t mention, so I imagine either he doesn’t know (they haven’t cultured it, I think they’d only culture it if it got worse), or he knows but it’s nothing awful enough to warn me about.
Also I’ve been sleeping a good deal – day and night – and strongly suspect it’s because the CellCept has suppressed my immune system enough that it’s going into overdrive to fight this, leaving me with very little energy.  I am most active around dawn and dusk, making me… a cat?
Also I can’t tell if it looks more like an impact crater on a highly volcanic moon, or a very tiny cheese pizza.
Oh and everyone says it looks like it hurts.  It doesn’t.  Not unless you press on it or stick your finger in it (which I do to put the ointment in).  My bruised rib from my most recent spectacular fall?  THAT hurts – FFS ribs, behave.
Notes:
  1. partslagparthero answered: It might be something different, but it looks a lot like a small pyoderma gangrenosum from what I can see in the pictures. They’re ulcers that often happen on the legs, at sites of some injury, in people with some sort of immune weirdness going on.
  2. maikisan said: ringworm, maybe?
  3. maikisan answered: ringworm?
  4. vassraptor answered: Not looking, but sympathies to you and Fey. Human skin has such poor traction.
  5. patruelesfratresomnes answered: looks like it could be fungal. i don’t know if that was already brought up or ruled out, it’s just that’s what it looks like to me. i went and looked at some google searches for you. didn’t anything that matches it. I might try again after I sleep.
  6. cirque-du-spoon answered: I’m not super experienced with infections, but this looks like the infection my grandmother got from a small scratch of a gooseberry bush, which didn’t really respond to antibiotics, eventually treated by a maggot dressing.
  7. withasmoothroundstone posted this