I got bitten by a brown recluse like ten years ago (different spider I know, but also very poisonous), I still have a scar that fills up with nasty ass puss every few years. Yes, I have seen a doctor about this and they said deal with it, some people have to get limbs amputated over shit like that.
I mean, he did. Such poison damage is a bit similar to bad chemical or fire damage, except it often affects deeper tissue stronger and can “hide” behind a relatively healthy surface skin.
The damaged deep tissue has died and turned to slush from the poison, which the body needs to dispose of and then rebuild from scratch. However, with large damage in the deep tissue, which is where skin repair should originate from, this is often impossible to achieve perfectly. So you often get enclosed pockets of “weird/wrong” tissue that has no proper drainage to the outside or inside to the lymphatic system. So occasionally, bacteria or viruses crawl in and fester. The bad circulation due to the previous damage means the immune system has a hard time fighting it, which usually leads to it cordoning off the area, forming a so called abscess. If this abscess can then be properly drained to the surface and sterilized(!), this can keep it calm for very long times and is comparably easy to manage and monitor.
And there is no good alternative. You can try and remove all the damaged tissue, which has the unpleasant side effect of having the surgeons carve a huge hole in you. Which the body again will have to try and repair, including massive scarification, possible los if function is nerves and/or muscle tissue is lost and a very high risk of formation of more abscess-prone internal scar tissue. If there’s no way to deal with the occasional infections in a hygienic manner, there’s a high risk of abscesses draining internally sooner or later. This almost always leads to intense sepsis, which is very often lethal after mere days.
Which is why the usual alternative to large-scale deep tissue damage is called amputation, even today and with all the crazy medical advances we have.
I suppose I would have been the one to take the ‘carve’ method, removing the damaged tissue and having new skin grafted on. If the doctor presented that as an option and it was refused, then that’s fair, but as someone who has damaged lymph nodes from an infection I’m keenly aware of the misery a chronic condition can cause with no real long-lasting solution. Yet I still was given treatment options and medication which I’d expect as standard practice.
If it was a scar on my face I might have gone the plastic surgery route and got it fixed, but it was somewhere where the sun don’t shine so I took the “just live with it” option. Cosmetic surgery is still an option, just not really worth it to me, the only people that will ever see it would be sexual partners and it’s not so bad that someone would see me naked and be like “that’s a deal breaker”. Most people don’t even notice it unless I tell them. It’s on my upper thigh so like for the first week or so when it was swollen and my balls rubbed up against it, it hurt like a removed, but after that it was just whatever.
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I got bitten by a brown recluse like ten years ago (different spider I know, but also very poisonous), I still have a scar that fills up with nasty ass puss every few years. Yes, I have seen a doctor about this and they said deal with it, some people have to get limbs amputated over shit like that.
If I had a doctor tell me “Deal with it” or “There’s nothing we can do” I think I’d go Karen mode.
Sir it’s your fucking job to assist me with this.
I mean, he did. Such poison damage is a bit similar to bad chemical or fire damage, except it often affects deeper tissue stronger and can “hide” behind a relatively healthy surface skin.
The damaged deep tissue has died and turned to slush from the poison, which the body needs to dispose of and then rebuild from scratch. However, with large damage in the deep tissue, which is where skin repair should originate from, this is often impossible to achieve perfectly. So you often get enclosed pockets of “weird/wrong” tissue that has no proper drainage to the outside or inside to the lymphatic system. So occasionally, bacteria or viruses crawl in and fester. The bad circulation due to the previous damage means the immune system has a hard time fighting it, which usually leads to it cordoning off the area, forming a so called abscess. If this abscess can then be properly drained to the surface and sterilized(!), this can keep it calm for very long times and is comparably easy to manage and monitor.
And there is no good alternative. You can try and remove all the damaged tissue, which has the unpleasant side effect of having the surgeons carve a huge hole in you. Which the body again will have to try and repair, including massive scarification, possible los if function is nerves and/or muscle tissue is lost and a very high risk of formation of more abscess-prone internal scar tissue. If there’s no way to deal with the occasional infections in a hygienic manner, there’s a high risk of abscesses draining internally sooner or later. This almost always leads to intense sepsis, which is very often lethal after mere days.
Which is why the usual alternative to large-scale deep tissue damage is called amputation, even today and with all the crazy medical advances we have.
I suppose I would have been the one to take the ‘carve’ method, removing the damaged tissue and having new skin grafted on. If the doctor presented that as an option and it was refused, then that’s fair, but as someone who has damaged lymph nodes from an infection I’m keenly aware of the misery a chronic condition can cause with no real long-lasting solution. Yet I still was given treatment options and medication which I’d expect as standard practice.
If it was a scar on my face I might have gone the plastic surgery route and got it fixed, but it was somewhere where the sun don’t shine so I took the “just live with it” option. Cosmetic surgery is still an option, just not really worth it to me, the only people that will ever see it would be sexual partners and it’s not so bad that someone would see me naked and be like “that’s a deal breaker”. Most people don’t even notice it unless I tell them. It’s on my upper thigh so like for the first week or so when it was swollen and my balls rubbed up against it, it hurt like a removed, but after that it was just whatever.
But have you got revenge, or did you forgive her or is this an ongoing rivalry, you should at least confront her about what she did