Getting Better!

Things suddenly turned around last night and hopefully I'm on the upside of this battle. So lets back up.

Friday. The redness and swelling were just as bad as on Wednesday when I started the oral anti-biotics (henceforth known as oral AB). Rob was set to leave to go to his parents so he could leave there early Friday morning for the charity motorbike ride. I said, I need to go back to the hospital. So I went. Not much wait, but poor Collin, the teen aged boy in the curtain area beside me. He got hit in the eye with some sort of object (I think it was a ball, the doctor said if it had been a baseball he would have been fine). They had to 'conscious sedate' him to take a look, and the dialogue from the doctor: "This does not look normal. There's a lot of crap coming out of it. No, not good. It looks like his globe is burst and the iris is against the cornea. He won't have much, if any vision, left". He went to the OR to get it cleaned out further, but they were shipping him down to Toronto for further evaluation on if his eye could be saved. It was funny though listening to the nurse trying to get all his piercings out. Small town life--a cardiac nurse is stumped by the earring of a teen boy.

Anyway, the doc comes in to see me, I give the little spiel about the surgery and the infection. She says sometimes this things take awhile or get worse first. But after examining me she left, and the nurse finally came back saying I was getting some IV anti-biotics (hereafter known as IV-AB). After it was finally done, the nurse comes back, saying I have to come back on Saturday night, and Sunday night for more IV-AB and then back on Monday for assessment!

Rob was not happy. He played the victim, etc. I told him at least I wasn't admitted!

Saturday I went back and it was not busy again, was in and out in 90 minutes (for a 30 minute procedure, LOL). Oh, wait, yes it was busy, but the triage nurse took me back instead of putting me in the waiting area so there wouldn't be any wars when she would have called me back before others waiting for much longer :)

Sunday....remember the scabs that had come off. I took off the band-aid. There was a big (in my mind) jagged opening with FLESH showing! AAAAAHHHHH!!!! Wound dehiscence happens in 25% of patients! It can take 6-8 weeks to heal! It's summer time! It HURTS! Like, getting 'road rash' from a wipe out. I've never had more than a badly skinned knee after falling off my bike. Even when I rolled my little car (and the airbags didn't go off), I was pretty much fine. The pain from this open area is what I was expecting the post surgical pain to be like. You know when you get a little flap of skin peel off next to your fingernail? Much worse. But, it's a chronic pain, and I can deal with chronic pain :)

So, I get to the hospital, and it is BUSY! Finally I get through triage and tell the nurse I also want to see a doctor this time. Yes, I was prepared to wait for that. But the idea was to get the IV first, or at least while I waited in the cubicle for the doctor. I finally got taken back. Not given a gown or anything, just dumped in the room. Finally the DOCTOR came. It was a little confusing for him, LOL. He said that when incisions open up, they don't stitch them back closed! He felt the infection was not responding quickly enough to the IV-AB and continued the order for Monday night as well. Then he left and I had to wait AGAIN for the nurse to come with the IV. She didn't like the looks of my hand around the existing lock, so put a new one in my arm. On Sat. it had dripped so slowly, when the nurse came back it wasn't anywhere near done, so she sped it up. It went quick after that, but probably too quickly and irritated my vein. While the IV was running the nurse cleaned the open areas and re-dressed them. Finally I could leave (three hours), but I had to go get groceries. I was SO tired.

Monday. What a day. First thing in the morning was a workshop on raising kids with challenging temperments. Lucy and Megan went in the babysitting room. I could hear someone crying, and after Lucy said Megan cried a lot. When I went out finally to get them, Megan was so excited and laughing when she saw me! I never get that response, LOL.

Then we were supposed to go straight to the school, but I had forgot the camera so we stopped by the house and were late for Huey's class picnic/mini-concert. But we got to see most of it. I had put my name in to help set up for Lucy's graduation, but they didn't' need me. So I wasted a lot of time with Megan until the graduation. We should have just gone home after Huey's thing. Lucy's show was great. The JKs don't 'graduate' from kindergarten, but were part of the show. Then we had a bit of time to waste again till Huey got out, then we trucked on home and I just about collapsed on the couch.

Rob finally got home right as I was running a bath for Megan, who desperately needed a bath. I desperately needed to wash my hair (I hadn't figured how to protect my arm in the shower, when the lock was in my hand, it was easy with a latex glove). I was going to wash my hair while she was in the tub and hope she found the shower funny finally. I took my shirt off and notice ALOT of blood on my bra, on the left side--same side as the infection). I took my bra off, and gooey blood came gushing out. I'm running around like a crazy person trying to find something to sop up the blood, while trying to keep Megan in the tub, and Rob gets mad that he has to interrupt his dinner to wash Megan's hair and get her out of the tub. I only had one pack of gauze left, so I stuck an Always pad on the spot, LOL. Hey, they're designed for blood, LOL.

I went to the ER a little bit later, but it was BUSY! The triage, the waiting area, the treatment areas. Only one doctor working! Finally saw the triage nurse, and she arranged for me to get the IV while I sat in the triage waiting area (it had emptied out), but I did have to wait to see the doctor. And wait. So many non-emergency situations. I listened to a tired mom tell her tired young kid she was a moron and stop being so annoying. I listened to a 19 year old boy register because of a larger lump on his butt that feels like a tumour and several people in his family have cancer. He's had the lump for 3 1/2 months and finally comes in on a night he'll have to wait possibly 5 hours. He had no health card cause he had been living in Florida for 7 years and had just moved back (so no family doctor either). How does the triage nurse stay so mature? LOL. She did tell him that although the waiting area was fairly empty, every treatment area was occupied and it'll be a long wait.

Finally the doctor comes in. This is the 4th doctor I've seen at the ER during all this. She takes a look and says it's a good thing! Because the blood is gooey, ooey, icky, it's most likely the abscess draining. All on it's own, it's found a spot to drain! Good little abscess! While I had been waiting, I started getting horrible pains in that breast, in the abscess area. Now, I have had three natural labours. This hurt worse! (Okay, I think a paper cut hurts worse too, but these pains were bad because they were intermittent). The doc does some prodding, and squeezing and pushing. Slightly tender, but I'm still pretty numb. Out comes lots of ooze and blood. Even one of the small scabs around the areola starts bleeding a bit. Finally she declares that it's slowed down enough to stop.
She sends in a nurse to clean me up and re-dress the areas. Nurse Sara had a reduction in 1989 when she was 19. She knew she never wanted kids, so she had it done then, and had no problems. Back then, she had the compression bra/bandages for 10 days. We had a nice chat, and she packed me up good. Even sent me home with a loot bag! She reminded me alot of the girl in the room beside me in residence, in 1990/91, named Sara who was in nursing. Same haircut/colour. But Nurse Sara is taller. Or seemed that way from my position, LOL.
So, that visit, last night, was 4 hours. That is long for our hospital, although I hear people talk all the time of waiting 5 hours or more. I'm usually in and out in 3-4 hours.

Today, I secured a newspaper bag (the plastic bags the paper gets delivered in) to my arm, and had a LONG shower to loosen the tape, and finally get cleaned. Not much bleeding over night, and the bad pains are pretty much gone. Except, there is an area about the size of a pea, on the areola scar in the infected section that looks like a blood blister, and it hurts! OW! It did stop hurting today, so maybe it drained. The swelling has come down, but as of last night, there was still a lot of redness, and firmness inside. Hopefully I won't need the IV-AB tonight. We'll see, 5 treatments is normal.

So, wow. What a week. I'm so glad that this type of infection doesn't affect the rest of you. I couldn't cope with all this if I felt like crap too. Tomorrow I go see the PS. Won't he be in for a surprise, LOL.