Stung In Providence

So Saturday was a beautiful day here in Rhode Island so Hubby and I decided to go downtown and take some scenic and/or artsy pictures of our fair city. It was during the height of our picture snapping that I ran my hand down railing into an insects ass therefore getting stung on my pointer finger. The pain startled me so I shook my hand and flung the insect somewhere. Through the pain of my instantly throbbing finger I tried to find said insect so I could determine if it still had it's stinger or if the stinger was in my finger. I couldn't find the nasty little creature but my finger wasn't hurting too bad so we carried on in our photo taking. Hubby even bought me a frozen coffee treat to hold on it as ice and quench my thirst. Alas here it is 2.5 days later and I now have elephantitus of the pointer finger. It's quite swollen and hard to type/write with. I have been asking the opinions of mothers here at work as to a treatment since mine is too far away to diagnose and would probably tell me to go a doctor which is just plain silly. So far one person said to soak it in iodine, another said to put the sticky part of a band aid on the sting sight and rub it in and pull it off real fast and so that it would pull out the stinger, another said to poke at it with a pin and see what happens. Two people said to soak it in Epsom salt. Since one of those two people was my Dad over the phone yesterday I think I will follow that advice, since I am also very curious about what is going on inside my finger I will poke at it with a needle first and then do the soak. I will keep the blogosphere posted as I am sure this is the most fascinating this going on in the world today.