Dilaudid wrist injection site lump?

[temporaryforever]

I have been injecting for almost two years now and have worn out my antecubitals on both sides so I have had to resort to using my wrist...only been using it a few weeks but I have a horrible large lump there now. It doesn't hurt unless I hit it hard on something accidentally, and I am still able to hit in that spot and use it successfully without any pain. I have been using quite a bit of ice to get the swelling down but it only seems to work a little bit and/or temporarily. This never happened when I was using my elbow veins and I am just wondering why it formed very quickly (within 5 uses, though it has grown since then), what is causing it, and how to get it to go down some? Because right now it looks like a small golf ball on the side of my wrist and I don't want people to see it and question it, especially family members. The needle did slip out of the vein 2 or 3 times and I accidentally injected small amounts each time before noticing I wasn't in the vein and that caused it to swell even more, but only for a short time before it went back down to the same size. If anyone has any information regarding this issue, I'd appreciate it if you would share it with me! Thanks so much everyone!

 

[Keif' Richards]

First off, a picture would be helpful to us, but it's not totally necessary. I could sit here and play detective and all of that, but in all likelihood, we're dealing with a garden-variety abscess here. The larger veins are hardier and can take more abuse. The smaller veins in the hands are easily damage. You are running out of places to safely in inject and the cold, hard truth here is that you're going to need to find another route of administration that works for you, otherwise you're going to start experiencing more problems, more frequently. You wouldn't be the first person to start by injecting into his elbow and end up injecting into his hands... this either becomes a road sign telling you to change or it can become more fucked up and have you injecting into your jugular vein. Then you use your jugular up, nick and artery and die from an abscess on your spine (true story).

I'm not saying, come to jesus and get sober, but I really don't want you to have to deal with injection complications. You're displaying the early signs of someone who might end up getting hurt. For right now, I would use a hot, damp compress 0on the site. You need to stop injecting in the area if you want the situation to improve. Basically, if it starts to get better, you're fine, but if you notice it getting more swollen, more painful etc. you will almost certainly require medical intervention to save your hand.

For the record, it's not a huge thing to have an abscess treated like this. It's an outpatient procedure that stings a little bit, but is over within a couple of hours. It's one of those things in life, an abscess, that can be treated easily and forgotten about, but can also kill you if you let it go.

 

[temporaryforever]

It really doesn't hurt at all *shrug* I am just wondering what caused it considering I haven't used it a TON of times. Thank you so much for your reply, I have tried to be as careful and gentle as I can with this wrist vein because after this vein stops working, I have nowhere else to go...I won't do jugular, too dangerous, or feet...too high of a risk of abscess. I tried some heat last night but didn't do it for long enough to have any effect, I think...and around the same time I noticed how solid the lump is. I very recently collapsed the antecubital in my right arm after getting an infection (luckily treated by antibiotics) from contaminated water, then before I knew there was a problem with the water, just as I was getting over the infection in my right arm (the only arm I used) I got an infection from the bad water in my left one after injecting only maybe 30 times ever into the antecubital and somehow got a nasty keloid scar which confuses me because I easily used my right arm thousands of times in the same 3/4" and yes it did get bubbly where I hit at the most, yet my left arm formed a keloid almost immediately, so weird things have been going on with my veins, I also have one other emergency option that I've found....well, my left wrist doesn't work usually (haven't tried to hit there for a while til yesterday and missed, also it is almost completely virgin, only hit maybe 3 times tops there) but I found a small but sometimes very fat vein running on the under side of my wrist and I have hit there three times but I realize that is not a sustainable location to use and I only did it when I did because I couldn't get a hit anywhere else...ANYWAYS, yes you are right, I need to just quit. My little brother is leading by example, well sort of, he had to almost die in order to quit heroin and meth, which is why I was super on top of both infections I got and went to the doctor like the next day when I realized something was wrong...because my little brother was homeless and on heroin for at least 6 years if not longer, and he ended up getting septic and at first I got false intel from FB saying he was dead and I was hysterical but not surprised, then the same girl that posted RIP on his profile posted on her OWN profile AFTER she posted on his profile that he was dead, and she said she had just talked to him in the ICU and that he was alive...that pissed me off cuz I live far from him and wasn't able to be in contact often with him when he was out on the streets and here this girl first posts that he's dead, then right after that, that he's alive but she leaves the post that he's dead up instead of deleting it...sorry I got sidetracked! The point of this is my little brother who was homeless and using dirty heroin needles out on the streets for quite a few years ended up getting a very serious case of sepsis and spent 3 weeks in the ICU in pretty rough shape, and when he got a little better, it was determined that the sepsis had gone to his heart and done irreparable damage to his tricuspid valve and would need open heart surgery as soon as possible to fix it at the age of just 28 and the doctors told him if he got high even just one more time, he could die. At this time, he told me he was still doing it about once a month and I scolded him like a big sister should but at the same time I was proud that he valued his life enough to instantly and suddenly stop doing it multiple times a day after years of that...so the point of this story is...I'm an idiot and I started shooting up after all of this took place...I planned to do it just a few times which was an idiotic plan considering what an addictive personality I have.

PS. My brother got his heart surgery successfully several months later and has been clean from street drugs ever since then with the help of methadone, which after about 1.5 years on it, he is now reducing his dosage in order to get off of it soon. He has his own apartment, car, and he had a job until he qualified for SSI and now has a brand new puppy and I couldn't be prouder of him...I hope I can someday have the strength to do what he did, and quit for good, never looking back.

 

[Jen X]

Try rotating with your legs, some juicy veins in there.

 

[TheUltimateFixx]

If you were a guy I'd tell you to try the cephalic vein, but most women can't easily access that unless they happen to be athletes.