tick tock it's bed bug time

Last Saturday December 9th, I woke up in the wee hours to find that I couldn't bend my pointer finger without pain.  It felt swollen.  My thought were this is what sore joints feel like, I must have arthritis in this finger.  When I got out of bed around 7, my finger wasn't as stiff, but still sore.
A little later when I returned to fix my bed I noticed a big tick on my bedding.  Since it's winter I didn't know if it was dead or even if it really was a tick.  I smashed it to see if it would die.  After staining my bedding with a blood spot I realized that it was an somewhat engorged tick.  I took the rest of it and flushed it down the commode.
Soon after I noticed that there was a splinter or something in my finger.  So that made me feel better that I didn't have sudden onset arthritis, but it did make me wonder how I got the splinter in the middle of the night.  After I got the splinter out, it occurred to me that it might of been the tick that caused my finger to have pain and that the "splinter" was really part of the tick.  I got out what I could see asap.  No rashes yet and I'm not sure I got the whatever it was completely out of my finger because there is a little pain.
Ticks in December....ugh.  I looked up the tick and I think it was a deer tick too....man..

Update..it was a bed bug...we found the problem and removed it and haven't had any bugs since.

I kept saving the bugs in glass jars and putting them outside on the back porch.  They were like the world's worst pets...pest.  In all but one jar I remembered to put either alcohol or diatometous earth.  The bugs in the treated jar died.  The one jar that wasn't, bug multiplied.  I threw the other jars away, but kept the live bugs...I didn't know what to do with them.  I was afraid to open the jar in case one got out, but I didn't want to toss it in case the jar broke and wreaked havoc wherever it ended up.  I had a ticking time bomb.  I ended up throwing it in the trash after many weeks of unnecessary worry and strife. What a wonderful day that was.  I can't believe we got rid of them.  If you see a tick in your house in the winter it is not a tick.