well, that was unexpected

I woke up today with a big, nasty blood blister on the inside of my big toe. My right foot's been a bit swollen again, and I wonder whether the foot swelling and blister might be connected. They say that heart-failure patients can suffer from swelling of the ankles, so I'm not sure whether the foot swelling and blister are related to heart failure. Maybe they are; maybe not.

Disgusted by how bloated the blister was (and unnerved by its seemingly sudden appearance), I decided to lance the thing. I have a sharp dental hook that I often use instead of flossing; I thoroughly washed the hook with an alcohol pad, wiped down my toe, then placed a Kleenex between my toes to absorb whatever was about to come out of the blister. With that, I sank the dental hook's tip into the blister. Having done stuff like this before, I knew there'd be no pain: the blister's "dome" was nothing but dead skin, with no nerves to worry about. What I wasn't ready for, though, was the little geyser of nasty liquid that came out of the puncture. It looked like a mixture of blood and pus, but it had no pus-like smell. I squeezed the blister to get as much liquid out as I could, then I wiped it down again with an alcohol rub, dabbed at it with a tissue, and covered the whole thing with a large bandage.

This evening, I'll minister to the puncture again. I'm hesitant to remove the dead skin right now: whatever new, delicate skin lies below it might not be ready for exposure to the air. So I may go a day or two before I decide to cut away all the loose, dead skin of the blister. My normal policy with blisters is Don't fuck with it, but this one was abnormally huge.