Listen to the sounds...of silence.Sorry I've been away so long. My wife got very ill with some kind of skin infection and it has been a roller coaster ride trying to find out what was wrong with her.
It all started with her waking around 2am with a bad case of the chills and a fever. I tried giving her something to bring the fever down, but it persisted over the next couple of hours. She was shivering violently and uncontrollably. I finally was able to convince her to let me take her to the ER around 4am. The folks at the ER looked in her ears and eyes, made her say ahh, took a chest xray and a pee sample, then told us to go home and keep taking Motrin for the fever. Supposedly it was a viral infection and there was nothing to do but tough it out. If she gets worse or the problem persists, we're supposed to go to some state run clinic for the needy. Now, I feel it is neccessary to point out that both my wife and I are gainfully employed and have insurance. Unfortunately, when you wife starts shivering violently to the point of near convulsions due to feve in the middle of the night, digging through desk drawers and boxes you haven't opened since moving for an insurance card is not high on your priority list. We did tell them all this, but I guess they thought we were lying.
We both stayed home from work since we didn't get out of the ER until around 9am and later the next night, we notice a red patch of skin on her left shin, like she was burned. Obviously we hadn't been setting each other on fire that day, so we thought it was odd. She also complained of a lot of pain in her leg. The fever came back strong again that night, but we gave it the old college try and toughed it out. The next day, we noted the red area on her leg had spread quite a bit, covering most of the front of her shin. We thought this was odd, but she was staying home from work again, so we decided to wait and see and follow up with the clinic the ER had referred us to later. Shortly after lunch, my wife called me in a panic because her fever had shot up again and she couldn't get anyone from her family to take her to the doctor. I left work early, but due to the distance of the commute, didn't get home until around 5pm anyway. Fortunately, this clinic they referred us to had after hours service, so we loaded up and headed over to see a doctor. We had also armed ourselves with our insurance information, obtained by phone and written out since they were sending us a new card. We went through all the rigamorole of signing in and filling out patient history, etc. After we finally got to see the doctor, he said the redness was just a rash that was the side effect of the viral infection. By this time the redness had spread most of the way up and down her shin, onto her ankle and partly around the back of her calf. I'd also like to note here for posterity that this redness was accompanied my swelling and localized fever in the red area. The redness was not splotchy with raised welts like you would see with a surface rash, and my wife could barely put any weight on her foot without being in excruciating pain. She also said it "feels like something is eating at the muscle." The one thing I will give this doctor credit for is that he had the foresight to get out a sharpie and draw a line around the area of redness. Unfortunately, he only drew around the portion on the front of her shin. He sent us back home with the viral infection story and said to keep taking something for the fever. If the redness spread outside the lines, we were to come back to the clinic and have someone look at it again, but he was pretty sure the redness would start to go away.
Another sleepless night, fever, and pain later, and guess what? It spread more! Now there were red spots going up the inside of her leg following the path of the major artery in the leg. Not comforting.
Back to the clinic we go.
This time, a different doctor comes out to take a look and see if they will see her or send her back to the ER. The guy takes one look at her leg, listens to her explain what she's feeling and says, "You need to go to the ER now. We'll call and let them know you're coming. Tell them to check you for Cellulitis."
A brief aside:1. Cellulitis is a
bacterial infection of the tissues just under the skin.
2. My wife's mother died when my wife was 9 years old because doctors and nurses at the ER failed to properly diagnose her and recognizethe symptoms of toxic shock and treat for it, sending her home three times with "the flu" and "viral symptoms."
3. Bacterial infections, if not treated in time, can make the blood septic (poisoned) aka Toxic Shock.
Thanks WebMD.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled program...So we rush back over to the ER, they are waiting for us and start taking vital signs to check my wife in. Her temperature, which had been hovering aroun 99-101 has gone up to 104.2. Not good. Over the next five days, my wife is in the hospital and they pump her full of some very powerful broad spectrum antibiotics. So powerful that it burns like fire going into the IV in her hand. Because it hurts so bad, she begs them to turn down the rate of the IV from 100ml to 35ml. It is normally supposed to be run at 200ml. This causes the IV to take about 3 hours to empty. They are supposed to give her a new bag of the stuff every 4 hours. Needless to say, she doesn't sleep much and is in a lot of pain.
The good news? After the second day, there are visible signs the infection is going away.
So they finally release her, but are not real clear on why she got this infection and were even still hesitant about calling it cellulitis. I know it's just a general term, but you would think that would make them more confident about using it. Nope.
Fast forward through another week and a half of antibiotics and a follow up visit that made me want to bodyslam a doctor through a table...
This past Sunday morning about 3am, my wife started getting severely dizzy out of nowhere. It went on for about half an hour and then she got nauseus and started throwing up...a LOT. Rush back to the ER, sit in waiting room for half an hour while my wife throws up in a trashcan every five minutes, finally get them to check us in and the first doctor that looked at her said it looked like she had an infection in her inner ear. This he referred to as Labyrinthitisand said he would get her an IV started with some more antibiotics. Sounds like another bacterial infection, right? Enter the first doctor we saw at the clinic that told her the problem with her leg was just a normal rash from a virus. Hear the learned doctor tell us it's just vertigo while also telling us that her white blood cell count is
four times normal. Enter several hours of back and forth getting two different stories from nurses and doctors. She gets admitted to the hospital again, but this time instead of an actual room, they put her in observation, which is like a prison cell with a hospital bed in it. No TV, no shower, barely enough room next to the bed for me to sit with her. I was surprised they actually had a toilet and sink for her use. This is about four hours later, by the way, and still no one has brought her any antibiotics. What she does have is a saline drip IV which gets emptied and replaced on a regular basis.
Cue the angry waterlogged wife.
They did give her a shot for the dizzyness and nausea. Also, during the initial screening they asked her what the room was doing while she was dizzy. She told them it was jumping up and down. This was described to me as "A very bad thing(TM)." After a while, the room stopped jumping up and down and started to turn right 90 degrees and reset itself. This was better but not best. They kept her overnight and discharged her the next day, saying she just had vertigo. At the follow up the next day, the clinic doctor said "I don't know what you want me to do, this is all just in your head."
Yes. That's right. He said it.
Needless to say, I had her go to another doctor and get a second opinion. This second doctor saw her right away, looked at her pupils (one was dialated and fixed, the other was normal, again I'm told this is a Bad Thing(TM)) and proclaimed her with a severe ear infection. When she told him her tail of woe he was amazed at the incompetence of the previous doctors. He immediately put her on antibiotics again and gave her a patch for nausea.
Over the last few month, the wife has slowly gotten better. She's to the point where she can get around on her own power now, but she still has the occasional dizzy spell or twinge of pain outta nowhere in her leg. Seems like she's out of the woods, but with something like this, who knows. The doctor seems to think she'll be fine to go back to work after he vacation time runs out in mid June.
And then there was one...So what else have I been doin over the last month that has been keeping me out of Blogland, you ask? Finishing up my classes for this semester, for one. I made it out alive, and now I have one class that stands between me and my degree. One unit of Humanities...language, philosophy...something... And I'll be done...unless I want more of a degree. I do, but my wife made me promise that it was her turn to go back to school after I finished this degree plan...it's only taken me..hrm...let's see...from 91 to 05, carry the two, divide by zero....
...
Yeah...14 years for an associates degree. WTF mate?
