Injection abcess resulting in severe pain and limited motion

[moda00]

Okay, SWIM feels stupid as hell right now, and is quite scared. She has been doing dope on and off for quite awhile, but recently spent a large chunk of time totally sober, and then time after that using only psychedelics (once every 3-10 weeks depending), occasional marijuana (about once a month), and occasional Rx meds prescribed to her (5mg methylphenidates (2-4 times/month as needed), 200mg Modafinils/Provigil (2 pills daily), and methadone maintenance (120 mg daily split). She recently used heroin again for the first time in awhile, and has been using on and off now for about a week, week and a half. Always use a clean everything, alcohol before, Bacitracin after, and never had probs in the past with daily injection with clean equipment and rotation of sites.. but her veins are already mangled this time, from less than two weeks of use, and her arms have several mildly painful areas and are going to get badly trackked if she doesn't stop soon.. She considered the groin but it's risky and she wouldn't know how to go about doing it properly, so she attempted a foot vein. Very slowly, steadily, etc. but only about a third made it in, maybe less. She thought she pulled out fairly quickly upon feeling the ping and realizing she had missed it, but a huge nasty red bump grew.. cleaned it a throughly, Bacitracin, change socks multiple times to prevent bacteria from growing.. thought all would be okay. But today, about 24 hr later, her entire foot hurts so badly she can hardy move it, and walking is even worse- she literally has to either hop on her other foot, or drag her injured foot across the ground. In addition, she notices that her past easy inject sites- inner elbow on both arms, inner wrist veins, are noticeably harmed. From her first abcess the first time she injected say 7-10 days ago- did the cleaning regimen, and eventually the acute pain and swelling went away. But she notices there are hard lumps still there, and she is unable to access these veins at all- either extreme pain when inserting, and/or -most often- cannot get a drawback, except for an occasional partial mini spurt of blood. She gets frustrated adn then tries to use the injection itself to gauge if she's in- and no, she's not. Not hardly ever. What gives? She is worried her arms will be permanently scarred, and also more importantly that she won't have access for medical procedures- she needs a blood draw redone next week, and another next month for minor health concerns, and there is literally not a place on her arm that will work for this. She's hoping that if she keeps treating the hardened areas they'll go away in time, but would appreciate any advice. In addition, as far as the foot goes- that isn't even an aesthetic concern or concern for future vein availability.. she is terrified that she has fucked her foot up so bad that it will become infected or one of those awful things one hears about but disregards because one is so rigorous with cleanliness, etc. She is afraid to go to sleep and wake up with her leg paralyzed, or some sort of blood clot, deep vein thrombosis.. I don't know but swim feels very very stupid and mad at herself and it hurts like holy hell. She has a way to get to an immediate care clinic covered on her insurance tomorrow first thing in the a.m.. but can get to an ER tonight if that should be necessary.. she is not looking forward to telling all the fucking nurses and doctors what she did to herself and getting "the look.." plus no pain meds, lol.. not that swim even feels or uses those any more.. once one has daily methadone and large amounts of iv heroin, popping three Vicodins is not going to do a thing.. in fact she still has some left over in her drawer from a dental thing months ago.. how weird is that for a dope fiend? Sorry for the rambling post and all, one tries to be informative and engage in thought-provoking discussion, but she doesn't know what to do in this particular situation and wanted to seek the advice of those whose monkeys or lab rats may have had experience with this, or even a friend of a friend, or a some info from the health profession.. Swim's freakin' out..