on heavy pain meds for a sudden infection crisis

I haven't had to take the heavy Tylenol 1's with the opiates in them since I had my dental surgery, but it's probably a good thing I still had those around, because I have a crazy problem today and yesterday that seems to demand it. But I'll try to be sparing about it. It's just unbearable pain from this sudden welt that just exploded in size on me. It's actually almost 2 inches now. Actually this particular welt is an occasional issue for me. It flares up about once every month or two months then goes right down to nothing again. But I've always been able to keep the pain under control by putting alcohol on it.

And you know, the doctor talked to me about it once and said it will require a small surgery to remove it whenever I'm ready, but I was just afraid of the surgery so I never really wanted to. But now it's obvious that I have no choice but to go through that surgery soon. Totally not looking forward to it but there's no chance I can take the pain or the size of this welt now that it's expanding. 

I've learned a lot about applying alcohol to infections from my doctor. I've made my mistakes. It's not for everything. And it really has to be not used too much. But in many cases I've saved myself from using antibiotics by using it. It's a life saver sometimes. For this issue, the alcohol has majorly reduced the pain in the past, making it fine to wait it out until it's just naturally calming down again. But the alcohol never stopped this welt from expanding in size and reaching maximum level. It just makes the infection painless and hard, to some extent at least. 

But sadly, this time, I really fucked up. Usually I put the alcohol on it using a little piece of tissue with alcohol, not sopping, and then tape that on for the night. I learned my lesson before, I cannot do that too many nights in a row, or else it will actually break the outer skin and cause a double infection on the outside too. And this time, I made the mistake of on the first night, just using a thin amount of cotton swab for it, and sadly that totally damaged the skin right away because the cotton is much more absorbant. So I couldn't continue using alcohol. So that's additionally adding to the pain. So I tried polysporin for the outside. 

Anyway, this is quite embarrassing to say, but this welt is on my butt, on the inside of my butt cheek, and it's the most horrendous place for it to be. The reason I mention it is because right now, I'm literally not able to sit on a chair, and going to the bathroom requires sitting whatsoever even if I just bend my body just to hover, and this will cause excrutiating unbearable pain that lasts for a long time, every time. So it's a total nightmare situation. Unfortunately, this does mean I'm unable to work right now. So that's not good for money. 

I've been pretty clean, but I do worry I should have showered more. I missed my shower one day during my period and I believe that seemingly caused it to flare up because periods are more messy. Regardless of the reason, I usually shower almost every day. I've looked into it with the doctor, and the doctor says that it's definitely true just the normal amount of mess around that area which is fairly unavoidable for anyone can cause this by bad luck. Frankly, I'm ongoingly prone to infections. We don't know if it's actually folliculitis of the hair follicle, or just something unfortunate that happened in a hair follacle on a deeper level of the skin one time. But the doctor can remove it.

Well, now you know why I didn't want the surgery (lol). I don't want a huge bandaid on my butt. It might take a long time to heal, so this is going to have to be quite a journey just adapting to this new arrangement with hyper care bandaid life in that region. 

Anyway, that's not the only serious infection right now. My tongue infection had been all better, but I guess there may have been some ongoing sensitivity to infection in general in my mouth due to ongoing yeast imbalance. So anyway, due to having started to eat raw apples as part of my diet, the apples were sorta thrashing on the gums in my gap where I have a missing tooth a little further back, and this aggravatated the gums enough to cause an in fection. Well a small outer surface infection is no worries, since it can be easily treated with alcohol. But I do have to honestly avoid alcohol in my mouth due to my tongue infection. But anyway, this time I had no choice. 

What happened is, without my noticing, the gum infection quietly got very angry and out of control. I didn't actually notice it because you have to press on it to feel how deep it is. I thought it was just a minor surface infection that should clear on its own, but I was mistaken. By the time I noticed it was getting really bad even when I'm eating, it had gotten completely out of hand. It was incredibly angry and threatening, so I decided to attack it with alcohol on that area. That's gotten most of it out, and it's nearly gone now. I just didn't have time to get to the doctor. There was no way I could get an appointment soon enough. So I carefully did that, and unfortunately, that's led to some minor pain on that side of my tongue which was exposed to the alcohol. 

At the same time, I took fluconazole (an over the counter antifungal) a few times over the last couple weeks for yeast infections that were starting to be a bit threatening. They weren't bad enough to really need to use fluconazole really, but considering that my mouth had an infection, I understood from my doctor that taking fluconazole could address issues in my mouth too, so I decided to take that. I believe that's been a great choice, and it has probably helped so much to resolve the infection while I'm working on it at the same time iwth alcohol. 

But I reached my max with these alcohol applications. I definitely worry a lot about my tongue and my teeth when exposed to it. So there's only the tiniest bit left in my gum, and I'm hoping it will resolve on its own but I'm just going to talk to my doctor about both issues. Thankfully, quite a while ago I set up an appointment for this Monday on the phone with my doctor. It's only on the phone, so the doctor can't surgically remove the welt, but at least I can just discuss the gum infection as planned and we can make plans for the welt for as soon as possible soon. The fact is, the welt should be better, or a lot better naturally, by Monday anyway. I'm sure the doctor would say to take pain medication while I wait for treatment. So that's it, I'm just going to see what I can do on Monday, cause that's the soonest sae's available anyway.