I am desperate for help. If you have any advice at all, please chime in, and fast!
I had pretty much every breastfeeding challenge in the book when my DD was born in December 2006. We got over that in about 12 weeks, and have had an easy nursing relationship ever since then. Until about a month & a half ago, when I randomly developed a crack on the side of my nipple. It hurt a little, but not too bad, and I tried just using Lansinoh (and occasionally Neosporin) and my wool nipple pads. The crack didn't want to heal, but it didn't get much worse either, and it just kept on like that for about a month.
About two weeks ago, I started feeling flulike symptoms and didn't put it together until later that I was probably fighting the start of mastitis. I took a day to rest, kept up all the immune support I was already doing for another illness (EmergenC 3 times/day, probiotics 3/day, mushroom tincture 2/day, echinacea). I started to feel better from the all-over achy feeling within a few days.
Less than a week later, this past Thursday, though the original crack was still there and not bothering me too much, I developed a second crack, this time right in the center of my nipple. This time it hurt very badly within a short amount of time. My best description is if someone took a metal kebab skewer, put it on the BBQ for 4 hours, took it off and directly stuck it into my nipple all the way to my back. I came on MDC and found it sounded a lot like thrush.
Thursday night I started grapefruit seed extract applied with a q-tip to the new crack. I kept that up Friday and aired out my nipple as much as possible, and Friday night I started to get even more of the shooting pains in the breast ducts. A friend lent me some Nystatin cream and I applied some of that in the evening and again before bed. I barely slept those nights from the pain. Yesterday (Saturday) the pain got so bad I became desperate for any remedy possible. In the morning I purchased Gentian Violet, Monistat, Lotrimin, more probiotics, Zand Candida Quick Cleanse herbal supplement, biotin, flax seed oil - anything I had read about. Almost 24 hours ago I applied the Gentian Violet, made a cream mixed of Nystatin, Monistat, Lotrimin and Neosporin and applied that, using fresh gauze pads frequently if I needed to keep covered. I also started the yeast-free diet right away and stopped the mushroom tincture.
Soon after, my nipple started to look worse. Whereas before it only looked like a crack but felt deeper, now the whole nipple looked blistered, shiny, swollen and the painful area was larger. Since I hadn't nursed on that side since Thursday morning (my DD only nurses first thing in the morning and before bed), I decided to pump because I started worrying about developing mastitis from not nursing. The pump was excrutiating, but I successfully drained that breast (I think). The pump made my nipple look even worse, super swollen, even the areaola. The blistered part looked worse.
This morning I see and feel no improvement whatsoever. I'm feeling really discouraged, and mostly, wonder if thrush is the likeliest culprit when all of the usual treatments are showing NO signs of improvement at all, and in fact, have made it worse? I've done multiple applications of the nipple cream mentioned above, many applications of grapefruit seed extract, yeast free diet for almost 24 hours, etc. I know that's not an enormous amount of time, but shouldn't I see at least a glimmer of improvement to show that I'm on the right track, especially given that I've actually been using the grapefruit seed extract for almost 72 hours? I've read about 25 pages (phew!) of the Thrush Support Thread, which is where I got all the info about what to do. But I also saw that some people treated for thrush and later found it was bacterial or staph.
I just need help and advice and support at this point. I feel like going to Urgent Care on a Sunday would just result in seeing a doctor less informed than I am. But I feel like I need to figure out what this is and get on the right track toward healing because I am in excrutiating pain! I don't know if I should keep up the thrush treatment when it seems to have made things worse, but I don't know what else to do either. I know many of you have been here before, so please, any help is appreciated. Especially if you actually read this entire thing!
I had pretty much every breastfeeding challenge in the book when my DD was born in December 2006. We got over that in about 12 weeks, and have had an easy nursing relationship ever since then. Until about a month & a half ago, when I randomly developed a crack on the side of my nipple. It hurt a little, but not too bad, and I tried just using Lansinoh (and occasionally Neosporin) and my wool nipple pads. The crack didn't want to heal, but it didn't get much worse either, and it just kept on like that for about a month.
About two weeks ago, I started feeling flulike symptoms and didn't put it together until later that I was probably fighting the start of mastitis. I took a day to rest, kept up all the immune support I was already doing for another illness (EmergenC 3 times/day, probiotics 3/day, mushroom tincture 2/day, echinacea). I started to feel better from the all-over achy feeling within a few days.
Less than a week later, this past Thursday, though the original crack was still there and not bothering me too much, I developed a second crack, this time right in the center of my nipple. This time it hurt very badly within a short amount of time. My best description is if someone took a metal kebab skewer, put it on the BBQ for 4 hours, took it off and directly stuck it into my nipple all the way to my back. I came on MDC and found it sounded a lot like thrush.
Thursday night I started grapefruit seed extract applied with a q-tip to the new crack. I kept that up Friday and aired out my nipple as much as possible, and Friday night I started to get even more of the shooting pains in the breast ducts. A friend lent me some Nystatin cream and I applied some of that in the evening and again before bed. I barely slept those nights from the pain. Yesterday (Saturday) the pain got so bad I became desperate for any remedy possible. In the morning I purchased Gentian Violet, Monistat, Lotrimin, more probiotics, Zand Candida Quick Cleanse herbal supplement, biotin, flax seed oil - anything I had read about. Almost 24 hours ago I applied the Gentian Violet, made a cream mixed of Nystatin, Monistat, Lotrimin and Neosporin and applied that, using fresh gauze pads frequently if I needed to keep covered. I also started the yeast-free diet right away and stopped the mushroom tincture.
Soon after, my nipple started to look worse. Whereas before it only looked like a crack but felt deeper, now the whole nipple looked blistered, shiny, swollen and the painful area was larger. Since I hadn't nursed on that side since Thursday morning (my DD only nurses first thing in the morning and before bed), I decided to pump because I started worrying about developing mastitis from not nursing. The pump was excrutiating, but I successfully drained that breast (I think). The pump made my nipple look even worse, super swollen, even the areaola. The blistered part looked worse.
This morning I see and feel no improvement whatsoever. I'm feeling really discouraged, and mostly, wonder if thrush is the likeliest culprit when all of the usual treatments are showing NO signs of improvement at all, and in fact, have made it worse? I've done multiple applications of the nipple cream mentioned above, many applications of grapefruit seed extract, yeast free diet for almost 24 hours, etc. I know that's not an enormous amount of time, but shouldn't I see at least a glimmer of improvement to show that I'm on the right track, especially given that I've actually been using the grapefruit seed extract for almost 72 hours? I've read about 25 pages (phew!) of the Thrush Support Thread, which is where I got all the info about what to do. But I also saw that some people treated for thrush and later found it was bacterial or staph.
I just need help and advice and support at this point. I feel like going to Urgent Care on a Sunday would just result in seeing a doctor less informed than I am. But I feel like I need to figure out what this is and get on the right track toward healing because I am in excrutiating pain! I don't know if I should keep up the thrush treatment when it seems to have made things worse, but I don't know what else to do either. I know many of you have been here before, so please, any help is appreciated. Especially if you actually read this entire thing!
I hope it is not an abscess, but if there is any chance it is don't wait - go to urgent care today.
