I had the same thing happen to me, except it was just a little sliver of glass stuck in my thumb from digging through a vacuum can at the carwash. I pulled it out just fine and washed my hands with soap and water. Maybe a little drop of blood, but otherwise no big deal.
Fast forward maybe like 2-3 days, and I get this throbbing pain deep in my thumb that goes on and off every couple hours. It gets progressively worse, and within a few days it's so intense that's that its impossible to sleep and it's all I can think about. I go to the hospital and they give me a shot of antibiotics in the buttcheek, and a 10 day cycle of oral antibiotics.
A few days into the cycle, the thumb is gigantic, probably the size of 2+ thumbs, and is turning dark purple and even black over a good portion. I hold my thumb under running water and grab a peice of the outer layer of dead skin over the mushiest part and pull....and the amount of bloody puss that ran down my hand was astonishing. And equally amazing.was how much kept coming every time I squeezed my thumb, but afterwards it felt sooooo much better. Soon after, my entire thumbnail fell off as well.
When the antibiotics were up, I went back so the doctor could take a look at it. He said I am very lucky that i didnt have to have the thumb amputated, but that the xrays showed the infection(it was staph btw) had eaten through the bone, and now there was a separate peice of bone that was formerly the tip of my thumb, that is not connected to anything and just floating around in there!!! I went to see a specialist for an mri, and he confirmed the infection was no longer in the bone(or anywhere), and he was tossing around the idea of resetting the bone with pins that would stick out of the skin for a couple months. I decided to hold of on the surgery to see how things went, and seeing as I could do pretty much everything just fine, I never went back for that particular surgery. Oh and there was a scab on the pad of my thumb that literally took a few months to fully heal, and i had to have a nurse do this procedure on me a couple time where she'd soak my thumb in a solution, then use a tiny pair of trimmers and a tweezers to remove the dead parts of the scab to promote new growth and get the hole to close.
The nail eventually grew back after a couple months, and my thumb is very noticeably lopsided, like it's kinda leaning to the side lol, and there's a scar of numb skin were that gnarly scab/hole on the pad was, but otherwise everything works just fine, and now its about about 2 years later. I feel very lucky too, because had I gone literally ANY more time before starting the antibiotics, I definitely would not have a thumb right now, because it would've had to be amputated.
My reason for this long ass post is to hopefully show you how this little thing can actually become a fairly significant thing if you ignore it. It might be nothing, or it might be just like mine, but I wouldn't roll the dice and hope that's it's not....I think it would be a wise idea to go to a quick care and have it looked at. Every day sooner that you get onto antibiotics(if you need them that is) makes a huge difference the severity of the infection and how much damage it ends up doing. Better safe than sorry, right?
Good luck, I hope it all works out good for you! 👍🤞
-this pictures are from today, approx 2 years after ordeal