Gauze Stuck In A Wound? Ouch. Help?

[Brenda G]

Okay, so two days ago I was riding my bike with some friends. My bike was starting to tip to the side, I shoved my foot down to keep from falling over, and my flip flip broke. My toe scraped againstthe road. Part of my toenail, and quite a bit of skin was yanked off, and some left hanging. It didn't hurt too bad, in fact, I ran to a friend's house from there, pushing my bike along, because I can't stand the sight of blood and I was afraid of passing out. There were no adults around, but we found a first aid kit and wrapped up the toe after rinsing the blood. It looked clean enough, no gravel or dirt inside, just a lot of dried blood that hurt too badly to clean out. When I got home, I re-wrapped the toe in gauze, neglecting to apply neosporin, and went to sleep. When I woke up, the gauze was hanging from my foot, so i pulled it off to replace the bandages. That was a mistake. Part of the gauze had dried overnight, and stuck to the wound. I cut off the remaining gauze, and wrapped over the bit that refused to come loose, thinking that it would eventually just fall off. Last night, I fell asleep at four in the morning, having been kept awake by the serious throbbing, stinging, and aching of my toe. I applied countless layers of neosporin, applied and relieved pressure, added ice, wrapped it in gauze, soaked it in water - all to no avail. When I woke this morning, the pain was worse than yesterday, although not half as bad as last night. Still, the gauze is stuck. I've soaked it in water, gently peeling that the edges, but I'm fairly certain that if I attempted to yank the gauze from my toe, it would only succeed in opening the wound, and damaging both the skin and the nail that it is attached to, that is, if it would do anything, considering how tightly bound it is. The wound is not yet healed, it continues to bleed on occasion. I seriously would hate to consider ripping the gauze from my toe, and refuse to visit a doctor (sort of a foolish phobia of mine), what do I do? What can I expect? Can I leave the gauze? Will I continue to be in pain? Why does it hurt so much more at night? Please give me answers, any information you have to spare. Thank you.