A Salutary Lesson

This post acts as a warning to all of you who have lost some or all of the feeling in your feet and hands. It comes from someone called Marcy and speaks for itself. Hopefully, her foot makes a complete recovery - thanks for the heads up (see link below).

Living with Neuropathy & Other Chronic Pain Conditions

As I sit here tonight with major pain and burning in my feet, I cannot help but think of what happened to me a few weeks ago. I got to thinking I should update my hub so that anyone that thinks of doing what I did "duh" may be interested in what happened to me. I hate the constant burning of my feet. So here is my experience with trying to help relieve the burning...

A few weeks ago my feet were on fire. You know that cold burning, like you have been standing in snow with cold wet socks and shoes, that horrible freezing burning about a step away from frost bite. I badly wanted some relief.

So, I put very warm water (so I thought) in the tub. Now, I stuck my hand in it to check temperature of the water. I also have neuropathy in my hands so not real well with temp but did not realize how bad they had gotten.

I got into the shower and could feel just a bit of sensation on my feet, so thought it may be a bit hotter than I thought, if I can feel any sensation at all It is unusual. So I then turned on the cold water and cooled the water a bit.

The next evening I was at a friends house having dinner and just happen to look down and realized I had a very bad blister on my little toe. It was about the size of my little toe. After looking a bit closer I realized that the blister on my left little toe went all the way around my toe and I had several other blisters on my other toes and a couple small ones on my foot ( I have pics but too gross to post them). I had never felt them but for some reason none on my right foot.

So I started doctoring them myself. I used tea tree oil (I use it for most everything) and have healed burns with it before. Anyway, in a few days half of my foot was beat red and hot. So I went to the convenient care at the local clinic. The practitioner got a little upset and told me that I needed to go to the ER and get antibiotics because it was serious and they could not help me.

I went to emergency room and they put me on IVs and took care of my wounds. But as they were doing this they were telling me I may lose my little toe (it was really bad) and it already looked dead. The doctor told me that my toe may be the least of my problems because with my neuropathy it is not going to heal like it should and if it does not get under control real quick they may have to amputate my foot.

I am thinking "what the heck, take my toes but leave my foot. Anyway, with a lot of different antibiotics and a couple different burn creams and a lot of keeping it bandaged it finally healed.

Sometimes when I take a bath I have no idea how hot it is until I sit down. Sometimes I get up out of the tub much faster than I got into it LOL

So if you have any loss of sensation in your feet or any other part of your body, you should use a thermometer or one of those baby toys that tells you if the water is safe or not. Maybe you have someone else in your home that can check the temperature for you.

And if you ever realize that you have gotten burnt, do not do like I did and try to doctor it yourself. Go see a physician as soon as you realize you are burnt. As far as that goes you should go see your physician if you have a cut, scrap or any kind of injury as soon as you can. Because it can get out of hand very quickly.

If there is a bright side to this story it is...that I could not feel the pain of the swollen red foot. Now every now and again I would feel a very light throbbing sensation, and a sharp pain every once in awhile. But, then again if I could have felt it in the beginning it never would have gotten to this point anyway.

http://marcyl04.hubpages.com/hub/NeuropathyandOtherChronicPain