So I wound up in the hostibule again. This time it was a week. Needless to say, Stacie was not thrilled and I had enough doctors and nurses tell me “listen to your gorram wife!” I lost count.
Here’s the timeline for the hostibulization, as I remember it. I was high on oxy for a lot of this, so forgive any errors. As usual I’m leaving out the names just in case anything I describe is technically an issue. Personally, with the exception of one doctor, I think everyone was stellar. Gave several of them the standard speech Stacie and I have come up with, namely that while I hope I never see them again in the hospital, they’re more than welcome to swing by for a barbecue or something. They all laughed and said they understood where I was coming from and that while they hoped never to see me in there again I should feel free to say hi if I see them at Target or wherever.
Leg ulcers started getting bad again, and like a dumbass I decided the best course of action was to give them a soak in warm water and Epsom salts. Yeah… Three weeks later I was in the ER.
Went to the ER the afternoon of 5 April. I told them what was going on, they did the basic pre-admission stuff, and got me into an exam room. Stacie hadn’t seen just how bad they were yet, so when the nurse got the bandages off she simply told me “you’re lucky you’re already in the ER.”
The nurse peeling off the bandages was a good dude. He’d been there for my 2020 ER trip when my right foot had that nasty abscess. So when he had to break out the saline to get the bandage off the really sensitive spot I couldn’t resist and said “oh sure, just salt that wound, why don’t you?” He looked shocked for about ten seconds before Stacie started laughing and he realized I was screwing with him. We all had a good laugh, and it helped lighten the mood.
Had one doctor look at it, agreed they’d need to keep me and put me on IV antibiotics for a bit. We discussed my diabetes since it’s a contributing factor, and he said I seemed to know what I was doing to manage it. He also said he didn’t think they’d have to amputate from looking at it. I had good pulses in both feet, it wasn’t gangrenous, etc. If, however, it turned out I had osteomyelitis in the leg amputation was on the table. Just like with my toe last year.
Wound up being moved to a room that evening just after the kitchen closed. So the admitting nurse took pity on me and raided the nurses’ snack fridge for me. Then I got some sleep.
Next day was a circus of examinations, blood work, wound care, you name it. Wound up on IV antibiotics. Four hour drip per bag, two hours of saline afterward, three times a day. So eighteen hours a day of IVs. Fun fun fun in the sun sun sun. Plus oxy every so often.
I wound up getting a pile of blood work and cultures and an MRI on both legs. The blood work was pretty standard stuff. Daily blood draws to check for whatever, made all the more fun by my veins fighting them – at least I know I’ll never be a heroin addict because I’d die of withdrawals just trying to find a gorram vein that would work.
The MRI was different from the last one. Last time they stuck my left foot in this big plastic brace kind of like a walking boot attached to the MRI table. This time they taped my feet together and stuck me in there up to my thighs. Then it was an hour of those unholy MRI noises slightly drowned out by some nice smooth jazz through the headphones.
It was also at something like 10PM because they had originally scheduled me for 5PM and showed up to roll me down there just as my night food arrived. Since I’d had a pretty nasty blood sugar incident the night before the nurses overruled them and said I wasn’t going anywhere until I had eaten. Then they had two emergency MRIs come in from the ER so I got bumped. Hey, no big deal. All I have on my schedule is lying in bed listening to the IV drip, and anything they find isn’t going to change significantly in a few hours. Please take the people who could possibly die without it before me.
Got my unofficial results from the night nurse when he checked on me at 2AM. Said they didn’t find anything to worry about, no deep abscess, no osteomyelitis specifically. Those were the two main reasons to get the MRI, so I was pretty thrilled. Osteomyelitis meant I’d possibly be losing my leg, and a deep abscess would mean they’d have to operate to drain it and fix the damage.
The next morning the doctor in overall charge of my case stopped by to tell me my official MRI results, which was almost word for word what the unofficial results had been. He stressed this was good news because it just meant we needed to kill the infection and do some wound care, followed by a vein procedure to fix one underlying cause and possible plastic surgery to cover the hole if my skin didn’t start growing back on its own as quickly as they’d like. Right on. I’ll take that news.
Then I got a visit from a surgeon who I can only assume was trying to scare me. He went on at length about cutting my leg off if they found osteomyelitis or anything else. He finally paused for air and I said “that’s interesting since I was told they didn’t find any osteomyelitis, deep abscesses, or anything else. That it’s just a really ugly ulcer that hasn’t even gotten into the muscle.” That changed his attitude pretty much instantly. All of a sudden it was “well, not today. But you’re looking at a 50/50 chance down the road.” Yeah, OK. You do realize you absolutely destroyed your credibility when you came in all Big Bad Wolf, right?
The next day I was seen by another surgeon, this one an osteopathic specialist. He explained the MRI results again, and focused on how there was no involvement with the muscle, bone, or connective tissues. Since that was his specialty, that meant he saw no reason whatsoever to operate on me personally. He then said that the lack of a deep abscess meant he didn’t foresee a need for anyone else to have to operate. More good news. Righteous.
At some point I also had an “arterial study.” When they explained this was an ultrasound, I wasn’t thrilled. I’ve had two vein studies, and they suck. You’re in your underwear on an exam table, and the person doing the test basically jams a TV remote into the side of your crotch right next to your gear. And they jam it in hard. Like leaning into it hard. In a few different places to get all the results they need. Then they do the other leg.
The arterial study is much better. You’re still lying on an exam table with your gown hiked up over your waist, but they aren’t nearly as rough. They just smear on the gel and kind of rub the probe around without nearly as much pressure. That came back pretty good. Almost no sign of arterial disease except for one minor artery going right through the bad part, so that may have just been trauma rather than disease.
Another highlight was a blood sugar crash so bad the nurse decided she wasn’t screwing around and shot me up with a syringe the size of a turkey baster full of something that sounded like “dextril.” I’m assuming that was some kind of sugar solution. It was blind luck they even discovered it because I had gone to bed for the night and the assistant nurse decided to check blood sugar for some reason. It was 76 when she first checked it, I had some juice, it was 70, I had some more juice, and the primary nurse brought in the turkey baster. When the day shift nurse asked why I hadn’t felt it, I said I assumed I was just really tired after my day of hostibule stuff and since I’d been running slightly high the whole time.
They discharged me the following Monday. Then I had wound care downtown at 8:45AM. That was fun and a half.
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