Midline

I have still been going into the infusion center daily to get my IV treatment of 2g of Ceftriaxone. It has been fun getting to know all the folks there. It seems like we are family now, the kind of family that mercifully takes blood out of my body and puts the antibiotic drugs in me like I'm some sort of drug addict. I now have pricks all over my arms from the IV lines (which they have been leaving in for four days at a time, then changing it to a new location).

Yesterday I saw the infectious disease doctor, Peter Brookmeyer, who wants me to continue the antibiotic therapy for a minimum of four weeks total, most likely six, and then do a few more weeks of oral antibiotics. Since the wound is so close to the bone, everyone involved feels like this is the best course of action. In fact, he said there is no sure way to know right now that the staph ISN'T in the bone, so this is the safest thing to do. I agree.

So to make things a little easier, they put in a "midline" catheter in my right arm (see picture at left). This thing has a little line that goes about ten inches up in my vien, and it which can stay in for the next two weeks. It will also make it easier for me to travel to Seattle next week for business. All I have to do is take a bunch of drugs with me and inject them daily into the midline. It's called SASH--first inject saline to clean the line, then hook up the antibiotic bag and let it empty out into my vien, then clear the line with saline again and finally inject Heparin to make sure the blood is flowing nice and easy.

As for the wound, they have decided to let it heal over, which is great because I was, admittedly, getting tired of having them force it open each day to pack it full of gauze. So let's hope that it doesn't abscess again and keep the infection going. I'll report back in a week or two, but for now, know that I am hanging in there and seemingly doing just fine!

A Dose of Good News

I saw Dr. Stephen Myers this moring, a well-respected local orthopaedic surgeon. He took x-rays and examined them and my wound. He said "my gut tells me that this is going to heal just fine." He was looking for a dark spot on the x-ray, which would have indicated staph-infected or dead bone, but there was none of that (thank God). Still, staph is hard to predict, so he wants to watch it closely. I will see him in a week.

Meanwhile, I will continue the daily IV antibiotic infusion therapy, although the ID doctor has decided to extend this to 4-6 weeks. I suppose he might ease that back a little if things look good after another week or two, but that remains to be seen.

Did I just dodge a bullet? Right now it looks, and feels, that way. So thanks, everyone, for your prayers--this good news today certainly is a sigh of relief, and something worth feeling great about!

Give Me the Drugs!

At today's "infusion" the doctor (Peter Brookmeyer) came and did a little "probing" into my wound. He was not too excited in what he was feeling. So he decided to treat it as a "deep wound," meaning that I have to have daily infusions for 4-6 weeks, as well as see an orthopaedic surgeon tomorrow morning to take a little closer look. The odds are that he will want to open it back up and do a little housecleaning, according to the infectious disease doctor. I'll report more tomorrow.

Infusion and Wound Repacking

WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS

Today I went to my infectious disease doctor with my camera and shot the antibiotic infusion and the wound repacking.

Please note that the pictures of the wound are disturbing. These are all self portraits--the nurse was kind enough to work with me to get good shots!

These first two images are of my getting my daily dose of Ceftriaxone. Thank God for the cool recliners.





However, I am just biding my time because in a few minutes they will unpack the wound, and I'm not looking foward to it--I know what it feels like, and it's not fun...

Next up is the unpack. Hmmmm. It's kind of like pulling a shoelace out of a shoe. This is where I try to keep from barfing...














Finally, it's out. One more shot of the wound. I skipped the repacking. That didn't feel good at all, so I set my camera down...

But not before taking one last shot of the hole. Don't you just love the human body? BTW, that "other" little scar below the hole is from my appendectomy back in college....

Purple Visitor

I forgot to mention: when the nurse attempted to inert the IV, she somehow missed and dug the needle through the vien, which hurt like hell. I asked her to try again somewhere else, and a couple of days later, a nice blueberry shows up. Beautiful!

Invasion!

I thought I was through blogging about my back injury, but the saga continues. On January 29th I had a bone biopsy in my hip done by Dr. Paul Miller in Denver. The purpose was to attempt to learn more about why my bone density is low and zero in on what to do about it. Although it was an uncomfortable recovery, I seemed to be doing fine.

Then on Wednesday February 6th, the site of the incision became red and puffy. The next morning I went to see my primary care physician, who said I had an infection and that if it got any bigger, I was to go directly to the ER. It got bigger. So I went to the ER.

After enduring three and half hours in the waiting room, complete with the drama of a death behind the doors inside the ER and family members in complete misery, I finally was admitted and seen by the ER doctor. He was very concerned about the infection being so close to the bone, so he took xrays (which showed no abnormalities in the bone) and took blood, which showed I had a Staphylococcus Aureus infection, or Staph. These can be nasty little infections. So they jumped into action, putting me under conscious sedation and opening up my hip (again!) to drain the infection. I must say, it was a little unnerving, and the open wound stuffed with gauze was pretty sick. See above for a self portrait.

So its back on the antibiotics and pain killers, waiting to hear what kind of results the wound culture will show. More soon.