COLOR CORRECTION
Some days you can be just too pink...
I don’t know what I did exactly last week, I don’t know if it was a bug bite, spider bite, cat scratch, or something else. But I ended up with a blistery red spot on the inside of my leg, right where the knee bends. I couldn’t get a band-aid to stick so out I drug some gauze and adhesive tape and I taped that sucker on so well I knew it wouldn’t come off even if I went swimming. I guess that was the wrong thing to do... By evening the inside of my leg was so red and sore, I thought it was the tape and that it was chaffing or was put on too tight and pulling at the tender inside of my thigh. So I took the tape off and thought that would help. By morning I was sicker than a dog, nauseated, headache, fever. Still clueless, I thought I had caught the flu, I had been around family that had been battling the flu. So I laid in bed and shook for a couple of hours with chills and kept checking my temp. I ached all over, and my leg did too. When my temp hit 103.6, and I saw the redness was creeping down my leg, I knew I had an infection. I took some Tylenol and got into see the doctor just after lunch.
Waiting in his office I just sweated buckets, and all I wanted was water...just give me a glass of water was all I could think. The nurse took my temp and blood pressure and when the doc came in he asked what was the problem. I told him I thought I had an infection and needed an antibiotic. He looked at the bottom half of my leg and said yep, infection, and sent me on my way with a prescription. So I went home with my bottle of pills and lived on water and toast till about the third day. My temp had gone down, I wasn’t as nauseated, and my leg did seem not quite so swollen, but it had changed. My pinky leg had gone a mottled purple. I made another appointment and got in to see the doc for a second time.You just know when the doc doesn’t say anything but sucks in air thru his teeth that isn’t a good sign. So I went straight to the hospital and got poked and prodded and bombarded with a million questions when all I wanted to do was sleep and drink water. It’s funny how after everyone left I couldn’t sleep then. The nurses kept peeking in to check up on me, vitals every four hours, and some crazy lady across the hall who kept yelling hello. If only I could have gotten her to yell "Marco"...I could have yelled "Polo" back and it might have relieved some of the monotony.
The second day the doc came back in with a horde of people, interns I am guessing or some teaching class, but they had all come to garner a look at the lady with the purple leg. I tried to pretend to be half asleep, it’s hard to muster a lot of dignity when your leg is getting felt up by strangers with all of the "ooh’s and ahh’s". Two more docs came in later and sat and looked at my leg and threw back ideas for more antibiotics, as they thumbed thru their little electronic gadgets looking up info. Finally they came up with something that made them both agree and as they left, they said they would be back, one later and one at 4 o’clock. I told them both to come back at the same time and we would have a party. I am not sure if I was still a bit loopy then, or if it was just me, but I will blame it on the drugs.
I finally got to sleep a few hours by the third day and it’s funny how things go thru your mind. I couldn’t help but think if only I had a webcam and laptop, I could do a live webcam of my leg and you all could watch it turn different shades, but I guess that would be about as interesting as the cornfield they have on webcam for the farmers to watch the corn grow. Still I though of all of you, any time I surfed the TV channels and came across the shopping network, I couldn’t help but think of Sleepy lady, which got me to thinking about MkChippy, and then onto the rest of you and what was going on in your lives and blogs. I thought of Morgan and her band of merry pirates and how I really was going to end up being "pegleg vic". By the fourth day I was climbing the walls and ready to go, sick or well, just wanted out of there. My arms were starting to match my leg from all of the needle pokes, blood draws, and IV’s. It seemed a line would never last more than a day and then it would infiltrate or leak and then it was back to the other arm to poke around some more.
Finally on my last day, with yet again another different doctor, he thought maybe I was well enough to go home as long as I was loaded down with antibiotics. They found a drug store open on the week-end and had them deliver the medicine out to the hospital. The woman would not let go of that bag of pills though till she was paid. Thank goodness I had my check book with me, or I think she would have gone back to the pharmacy with the darn pills. It just floored me, but I guess that is how our health care system is going. Money up front or it’s no deal.
I am doing a bit better, the leg is more mauvey-pink now, except for my ankle which still looks a bit angry. I think a part of that though is I feel like I have torn my Achilles tendon while walking on the leg when it was so swollen. At least that is what it feels like, so it may take longer for the leg/ankle to heal up than expected. Sitting seems to aggravate it more, so I haven’t been sitting up much with it. I go in later this week, and hopefully I get a good report. I already know it is going to be another round of antibiotics but pretty soon I should be back on here and in the pink...but not so pink that I am purple...
