Cellulitis
We had to go to the emergency room in the middle of the night because my husband has cellulitis in his hand. Because I'm keeping my ridiculous blog and I'm just kind of obsessive and nerdy, I have done a ton of research on heroin and its ravages on the body, and I know that cellulitis and other soft skin infections is one of these effects. My husband refuses to acknowledge that the infection is heroin related. I've pulled up a list of about 20 references, many of them to scholarly journals, and showed him all of them...it's also not like he got bit by a dog or a spider...he has an infection that he regards as completely unexplainable.
It's frustrating to me because I think it's important that he sees that there are physical consequences for his using. I know I can't make him accept something he isn't ready to accept...but I don't want him to keep killing himself, and I wish that he would see that even one little time using could potentially kill him.
He's decided that since he's only used once in the last several weeks, that the infection can't be related to heroin. I told him that if the heroin is tainted (there's another disgusting post I found yesterday while researching stuff for the blog about how heroin is often tainted with dangerous bacteria because it is transported across the Mexican border in the stomachs of starving heroin mules, and then later pooped out), it doesn't matter if he uses it once or a million times. Also, one of the articles I found said that decreasing the frequency of use or initial onset of use is one of the times your more likely to get a soft tissue infection because you're body isn't accustomed to being bombarded by the bacteria in the tainted stuff.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here by telling you all this...it just helps to get it out, I guess. Also, I'm curious as to your thoughts about how much I should keep trying to educate him about his using. It helps me in some ways to understand what he's doing to himself, but if he's not going to accept it, maybe I'm driving myself crazy for no reason.
Another thing that was ENDLESSLY FRUSTRATING was that the doctors gave him a big ole shot of morphine, right in his track-marked veins. I know it's not their job to look for these things, but it just seemed so WRONG. I hated watching it. They also gave him a prescription for vicodin for the pain, which scares the hell out of me. I had to leave him to go to work today...and I'm afraid he's at home snorting it or doing something otherwise ridiculous.
I hate heroin.
I included a picture of his yucky hand. Gross gross gross.