Swelling...HELP!!!

[spm162]

Just started my cycle last sun. Prop 100mg/eod and EQ 400mg/week. I did my last shot on thurs into R quad (eq and prop/2ml). I done quad injections for the last 5 cycles with no problems. Everything was as usual, but fri I woke up and my leg was sore. I thought it was due to the prop, but it is not going away and it looks pinkish and edemedous. I started taking amoxicillin in case of infection to be on the safe side but I don't know what the hell is going on.

[Innervision]

If it's a red lump and warm to the touch it's an infection. It should clear up on its own but if not, time for a trip to see your doc and be honest with him, it's not a big deal.

[spm162]

It's not exactly a lump. It is swelling from the injection site to about 5 or 6" down my leg. Not red, just a slight pink color. I don't think it is abcess b/c it looked the same the very next day after the injection. I think an abcess would take a little longer to develop.

[King Samson]

Originally posted by Innervision
If it's a red lump and warm to the touch it's an infection. It should clear up on its own but if not, time for a trip to see your doc and be honest with him, it's not a big deal.

Right. Watch to see if the redness spreads. You did the right thing taking the amoxicillin. How many mgs of the amoxicillin are you taking? It should clear up the infection if that is what it is. BTW its edematous incase anyone is having trouble with that word like I did.

[spm162]

Sorry about the spelling. I'm taking 500mg every 6 hrs. I have 3 or 4 days worth. The weird thing is the swelling only extends below the injection site. Even 1 cm above it is normal. ???

[spm162]

Update: Today my leg feels a lot better. Still a bit swollen and pink, but now I can put weight on it w/out it hurting. A few more days and it should be normal. I iced it down yesterday, which helped with the swelling. I plan to continue the antibiotics just in case, for a few days.

[King Samson]

The swelling usually spreads in all directions. You are doing the right thing though. That is a good amount of amoxicillin. Looks like this is passing without any major problems. Let us know if things get worse.

[spm162]

Update: Things are pretty much back to normal. I discontinued the amox Wed afternoon. The swelling and discoloration are back to normal with only a very slight bit of soreness. Between the rest, ice and antibiotics something worked. Now I just have to get past the pain from the prop..LOL

[superjew]

Glad you're feeling better bro. I see you're in smallville...can you get me a date with Lana? Droooooooool!!!!

[King Samson]

Cool bro, make sure you keep some of your antibiotics on hand in case this happens again. Glad to see everything has returned to normal.

[Pinch]

Originally posted by King Samson
The swelling usually spreads in all directions. You are doing the right thing though. That is a good amount of amoxicillin. Looks like this is passing without any major problems. Let us know if things get worse.

is amoxicillin require a perscription?

[ichabodcrane]

Eeee! Don't mean to but in bro, but often times, self-treating w/ an antibiotic (although not harmful to you directly) and not knowing the actual bacteria involved may not be such a great idea. I'll get to that in a sec.
It may be hard to decide what you had was a true infection, or just an inlammation related reaction to the injection. Cellulitis is often associated with redness and swelling of the area, plus the area is usually painful, nonelevated and hot or warm to the touch. Malaise, fever and chills usually accompany cellulitis. Now back to what I was getting at: Without a bacterial culture or gram stain , it is nearly impossible to determine what kind of bacterial infection if any is present. With cellulitis (for injection users), most commonly staph. aureus, strep and sometimes even anaerobes are the culprits. The infection brought on by injecting through the skin usually happens by introduction of normal bacterial flora that inhabit the skin ( mostly gram positive staph and strep) The problem that arrises, is that if it is a true infection and you self medicate with an antibiotic, is the chosen antibiotic appropriate for the bacteria causing the infection? You were on the right track with taking amox (a 3rd generation penicillin), in that it has coverage for the gram positive staph and strep organisms which cause cellulitis, but the bad thing is that the majority of staph bacteria produce an enzyme, Beta-lactamase, which renders the drug ineffective . This is usually why when amox is prescribed for cellulitis, it is in combination with Clavulanate aka Augmentin. The clavulanate prevents/inhibits the enzyme (beta-lactamase) produced by staph so it is more effective. What I am getting at is the ever increasing problem of bacterial resistance. I know you are probably thinking so what, but if you do a search on it, or look at the statistics it is a big and problem. Like I said above, bacteria have a special enzyme(Beta-lactamase) which can inactivate the drugs known as Beta-lactams (penicillins including amoxicillin and others). When penicillin was first introduced, there was not much of a problem with bacterial resistance, and it was an excellent drug for the gram positive staph and strep bacteria like those found in cellulitis. But very quickly, bacteria got wise and developed ways to inactivate the penicillins (the development of the beta-lactamase enzyme is just one of many reasons of bacterial resistance), and the use of regular penicillin became useless to treat most staph infections. So new antibiotics were and are being developed becuase of the recognition of resistance. By adding clavulanate to amoxicillin, clavulanate blocks the bacterial enzyme becta-lactamase from rendering amoxicillin useless. Today almost all bacteria have found ways to become resistant to antibiotics. The main reasons for the development of bacterial resistance are (and I am not targeting you, because prescribers should really be the ones to blame): Misuse of antibiotics- prescribing/taking them when they are not necessary, secondly not completing the full course of antibiotic therapy, this allows for incomplete kill of targeted bacteria and may provide them mechanisms to develop resistance (there are others, but I wont go into them), and also treating with the wrong antibiotic. Most peoples bodies naturally harbor small numbers of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, but the larger number of antibiotic susceptible bacteria in/on our bodies usuall keep these smaller resistant ones in check. When we take any antibiotic, we wipe out these normal healthy susceptible bacteria, and allow the smaller resistant strains to proliferate. Anyways, if this were a continual process, the resistant bacteria may soon become the predominant bacteria. This would obviously be a bad situation because then when an antibiotic really is needed, it may not be useful anymore.
But I am not picking on you bro, I just wanted people to realise that there is a time and place for antibiotic use. Obviously if you had a true infection, you would require an antibiotic to treat it. But the problems we run into are not knowing for sure when we do have a true infection. Even prescribers have a tough time determining this and this leads to the overprescribing of antibiotics. You may or may not have had an infection, but if you didn't and took antibiotics, you see where I am going with this. Things you can look for to identify if it is an infection are that it will be very red, hot, swollen and painful and you usually will run a fever and have a general feeling of malaise (not feeling well) or have the chills (not always though, but this is a good rule of thumb). Inflammation related reactions are very frequent, and usually present with redness and soreness, sometimes swelling. This is just your bodies natural response to an irritant or foreing substance. So you can see in general that it is often hard to distinguish between the two sometimes. But if you run a fever, this is a key symptom in infections. But if it is just an inflammatory reaction, usually an anti-inflammatory and ice/heat packs can help alleviate the symptoms for. But don't get me wrong, I am not saying what you did was the wrong decision, because whatever you did worked for you. Just realize that everytime you get an injection related reaction, don't go popping antibiotics w/o knowing for sure it is an infection.
Just be sure you are keeping up on proper injection technique and strerility. Also what type of gear are you using?

[spm162]

Prop, EQ, and Tren . I can tell between an injection related reaction and this. It wasn't only at the injection site but most of the way between the injection site and my knee. It felt deeper than a cellulitis (cutaneous or sub/cutaneous) infection. I wasn't f-ing around with whatever it was but I kinda see your point. I don't like taking any drugs, but if I have too I do. I think the reason for increased virus/bacterial immunity to antibiotics is that (1) penicillin has been around for how long? and (2) people do use it for unneccesary reasons. I picked amox b/c it has a broad spectrum of bactericidal activity against many gram-positive and gram-negative microorganisms and it was most accessable at the time. The symptoms I had indicated that I did have a mild form of infection, minus the fever and malaise. I'm in dental school right now so I have some clue as to what I'm doing. But that is a good point to raise.

[ichabodcrane]

.

[ichabodcrane]

Cool, so ya get the big picture then. Bacterial resistance to penicillin actually was noticed w/in months after it came on the market. It didn't take years. Kinda scary though. But it sounds like you know what you are doing for the most part.