Hello folks, since about April I've been dealing with a nasty infection that I let get far too out of hand before biting the medical bullet. It stemmed from an untreated work injury from months ago (Don't trust your coworker to move treadmills with you) that ended up fucking my toes. Nail bed damage, cracked nail under the skin, which led to a bad infection. My toes were always pretty swollen from 10 hour standing shifts, and the various injuries I got from moving gym equipment at that job, so swollen big toes went kind of unnoticed for me. But I dont think I'll be as oblivious in the future.

It flared up in April after a while of being at my desk, to where sitting at my desk for longer than 45 minutes would cause insane swelling in my toes and feet, and chronic pain below the shins. I figured because legs have bad bloodflow when you're sitting that it wasnt anything big, and I have a high pain tolerance and figured I would treat it casually while I worked. OTC meds, footbaths, gauze, etc.. and eventually switching to ice and elevation while I worked because the pain from sitting at my desk wasnt worth it. I moved my drawing station to the recliner in the living room and was able to slow the pain, but slow was all it did. Weeks went on and healing would just not show the results, and things got harder and harder to tolerate. Going outside the house and wearing shoes became things i'd dread just from the pain and knowing that i'd be spending the next days after in pain/trying to do damage control.

It became intolerable one day where I woke up and felt like every nerve in my feet was stepping on pins and needles. Leaning down and resting any of my weight near my toes caused me to recoil and hurt. Blood coming from the sides of my nails was a daily thing. Standing in the shower was painful when the water would fall down onto the sensitive areas. Waking up and the sheets being covered in blood around my feet was depressing, and one day after seeing the red swelling start to turn a little purple, I bit the bullet and called a doctor in the family, who recommended some meds, but they stung just as bad as the casual pain of my toes touching things. More time went by and they'd just get worse, to where the nightly swelling was so bad, i could squeeze my toe regularly and blood would spill out. Went to an urgent care and the nurse gasped when she saw how bad they'd gotten... and I have never felt more embarrassed to let things get this bad.

I spent the last two weeks on some heavy antibiotics, had my toes numbed, stabbed, scraped inside to make sure the infection didnt get to the bone, or else partial removal or amputation would have been the likely next option depending on how far the infection spread.

as I'm writing this, my toes are smaller than I previously thought they could be, aka, normal size. It took weeks for the swelling to disappear, and I'm still so scared that the infection could reappear, so I'm slowly re-integrating back to my desk, sometimes still at the recliner til I'm in the clear, as my feet slowly go back to feeling like the normal dumb things they are.

But happy (hopefully) ending, is that they look so much better now, and the pain has been mostly nonexistent this week. Things seem to be clearing up so I'll be uploading some backlogged stuff and getting to the work that I couldn't detail/polish up from a recliner.



TLDR: Take good care of your feet and body in general, don't sit at desks too long and go to the doctors if you can after work injuries, even if things feel alright. Make them pay for your shit. I didnt and this injury destroyed my mental and physical health for like 2 months, i think the worst is over, and I hope you enjoy some gay porn. Sorry for the delays, but this has just been going on for those who've been wondering. If you saw me in person with socks and sandals on during these two months, thats why. Those puppies were gauzed up like crazy.