-Dad came down with double pneumonia. As a family we've always been so scared of pneumonia, that's been like the big scary sickness my dad's done everything to avoid since I can remember. Anyone who lives in or has lived in this household for any period of time has gotten their yearly flu shots, if someone was sick with any type of bad cold or had a fever they weren't allowed in, my dad wouldn't share drinks with any of us if we had the slightest cold, etc. So the fact that he had double pneumonia, was just scary icing on the cake. Yet, after some time in the hospital and lots of IV antibiotics, he beat it...and it was a severe case also which made it even more impressive. When he was discharged from the hospital he went into the nursing home, for good this time. It's been super difficult because he hates it there and wants so badly to come home...if he could just accept it and stop thinking there was a way for him to come home, then I believe it would be easier on us all. It doesn't help though that his current roommate is deaf, dumb and blind and is in pain so he moans all the time. Poor man. But it's so hard for my dad to be there anyhow, but to have to deal with such a sad and depressing situation right in his room doesn't help. See and my dad still is 100% mentally coherent, and with it...and many of the other patients over there just aren't, many people with dementia of all kinds, and for someone who is mentally as sharp as a tack, it's scary, depressing and can make you feel very alone. I could go on for a really long time about this scenario, how we made this decision, how we've all been dealing with it, why he's in there permanently, etc etc etc - but like I said I really don't want to just write about past events to catch everyone up, because my recent event is long enough of a story to try and explain.
Just by looking at how long that one explanation became, I changed my mind and will try to catch everyone up in another blog post...because I can't sit at my computer desk for very long periods of time and I'd never make it if I wrote what I had intended on writing. "Krista, why can't you sit at your computer desk for any long length of time?" Computer, I'm so glad you asked, because I was just getting to that, lol - yeah I'm pathetic, haha.
On June 4th I was walking down my porch steps and slipped and fell. It didn't hurt that badly, I got a small scratch on the top of my foot, twisted my ankle a bit, but nothing sever to say the least. I didn't even need a band aid on my foot, it wasn't even bleeding - just a little scrape. The next morning I noticed that my left foot was swollen up quite a lot, but just figured it was due to the fact that I had twisted my ankle and assumed it was sprained. By that night though it began hurting really badly and I could barely walk on it. The next 2 days it just got worse, swelled more, hurt terribly, and I couldn't even put an ounce of weight on it. On the 2nd night I called my Aunt Sass after realizing my temp was 104 and asked her if the next morning she could bring me down to the ER...which of course she agreed to.
As soon as I hobbled into triage I knew things were much worse then I had expected. The nurse looked at my foot and had me sent within 2 minutes into the ER. Then when doctors started flocking around me I knew things were a lot more serious then I had expected. I started hearing words like "septic, emergency surgery, cellulites, MRSA, fever, etc." They then gave me a big ole shot of fentynal which got me pretty fuzzy and I don't remember too much after that.
An amazing Doctor who is head of the vascular unit at GFH was my surgeon and I felt very comfortable with him right off the bat, thank God! So the next time I really started sobering up was up in the ICU, with my first IV's, and a heart monitor, and all sorts of tubes and machines. I found out that in my surgery the Doctor had to remove 3 big holes from the top of my foot, in hopes that the infection would drain through those and not cause more damage. I was on two super heavy duty antibiotics through my IV's, and it turns out that my specific strain of infection was a Strep. The main three that are like what I had are Staph, MRSA, and Strep. The Dr. told me that the little scratch on my foot was the reason behind it, and assured me that I'd be ok and that everyone would be keeping a close eye on me.
The next day when the surgeon came in to change my bandaging all hell broke loose in my room. First off I had a mild panic attack when I looked at the three huge holes in my foot...and the pain was so intense that I came close to passing out. Then he told me that we were most likely going to have to operate again because there were new black area's of my skin, which means dying tissue. Yeah isn't that nice, I had a flesh eating disease, ick. Then he noticed that my left leg was bright red and hot too the touch - meaning the infection had traveled upwards. He quickly scheduled my second surgery for the following day, and drew some lines on my leg so he'd be able to tell if the red area's were higher or lower the next time he saw me. I was warned though that if black area's showed up on my leg then an amputation might be my only option.
So of course I was scared out of my mind, my family was in and out of the hospital visiting, and they were all scared to death...it was just a nightmare. The second surgery sucked! I woke up very quickly after being wheeled out of the OR, and when I did, the pain was so unbearable that I had never experienced anything close to it, yes even in childbirth. When I got back to my room my grandmother, and mom were in there and my crying only got worse and the pain wasn't getting any better. Luckily the nurses ended up rushing in and giving me more pain meds through my IV and it was just enough to bring it down to a humane level. I was still in the ICU at this point, had barely slept a wink because of pain and fear, and was missing Brian like crazy.
The next morning my surgeon came in to look at his handwork. First though he looked at my leg, and finally I was cut a break and the redness had started to lighten up and move down! So for the time being I was keeping my leg, which made things so much less terrifying. Then he took off my bandage and the panic attack I had after the first surgery was nothing compared to the freak out I had this time. I wish I had a picture of what it looked like on that first day, but I do have a picture from a week later...lucky you all, I'll show you - it's already been on facebook so most of you have se
en it.
I spent another 5 or 6 days in the ICU, which is the way to go if your in a hospital! The nurses only have like 2 patients at a time, so you get tons of great and quick care, private room, and just a few other nice perks that aren't available in other parts of the hospital. After that time I was transferred down to the surgical floor and stayed there about another week. Totaling my hospital stay at 16 days.
To sum this up quickly because my foot's starting to hurt - if it's not elevated it does that. I am now home. I have to go to the wound center once a week to see my surgeon, and I have a private nurse come into the house once a day to change my bandages. I'm now off antibiotics, which makes me a little nervous since I have a huge open wound, but ah well. I've got about 3 or more operations to look forward too. Skin grafts, harvesting healthy tissue from my hip, and whatever else they need to do. Once I start feeling better I'll start physical therapy, ect. No question that my summer will be spent with my foot up in bed, unable to work or anything, after that I can't even guess what the time period will look like, neither can the doctors. I'm keeping a good attitude though, grateful that this wasn't all much much worse. I'm figuring out how to still do fun stuff with Brian, inside and out. It is what it is though and all I can do is make the best of it, because like I said, it's going to be a long recovery.
I'll definitely write again soon to get my blog caught up. If I was crazy with details in the beginning and then just raced through things in the end that's just because my foot started throbbing so I wanted to wrap things up quickley. Hope you are all well....lots of love.
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