For those of you who have noticed I have been gone for almost a month. I was not sitting ona beach somewhere, instead I was in the hospital.
It all started the Friday afternoon before Xmas. All of a sudden, a sore opened up on my heel and started oozing blood. It hurt, but I didn't think anything of it. I endured it all weekend, exccept for Saturday afternoon when I went into the bathroom and got stuck there for 8 hours. That was because I was a lot weaker in my leg, but after 8 hours I was able to escape using my prosthesis. I had my first leg cut off 5 years ago.
Anyway I coooked as usual did my laundry and mundane things like that. On Tuesday, the day after Xmas, I went to the clinic to have it looked at. I was expecting them to clen it up, send me on my way, and tell me to come back in a couple of days. Instead, the nurse looked at it and called the doctor. The doctor looked at it and said I had to go to the hospital. It was then that I knew I had a problem. They took me to the emergency room and called the ambulance.
They didn't let me go home to get my things, they just sent me to the hospital. It was then I knew I had a real problem.
I waited over an hour for the ambulance to pick me up, but it finally came and I was on my way. After what seemed a long ride, I finally arrived and was taken directly to emergency. I waited about an hour before a doctor saw me. I then saw the doctor, who took down some information and who looked at my foot and treated it some. After that, I was back in the hallway for more waiting. Finally, they took me upstairs to the room I was in for over 3 weeks. They were optimistic that I had caught it in time.
One day they took me down to see a specialist who cleaned out the wound. They were hopefull that it would clear up from that point. I also saw a vascular specialist that day who was very optimistic. All in all I felt good about the prospects. In less than a week I had another appointment with the woman downstairs. Unfortunately, the problem had come back. She was very pessimistic at this point.
Some other doctors looked at it, and decided to do a surgery to clean it out and get rid of all the infection as the antibiotics had failed to. It was Wednesday, and they set the surgery for Monday. They were still optimistic at this point.
All this time they were cleaning the wound every day, which sometimes hurt a lot.
Monday morning came and the doctors returned to look at it before the operation. They didn't like what they saw, and after a short conference decided instead to amputate. I was shocked and very upset, because this meant the end of life as I had known it. I had adjusted to life with one amputation, but to lose both was unthinkable.
I called one of my friends, who came to the hospital and wanted me to go with him to the beach. He was convinced ocean water would heal my foot. I have no doubt that ocean water could heal a lot of things. He wanted me to try it for 2 weeks and if it didn't work, return to the hospital for the operation. I asked one of the doctors about this, and he said if the infection got into the blood, I would be dead in 24 hours. I decided that risk was not worth taking, so stayed there.
The next day I had my operation just before noon. It wenr much better than the other one. On the first one I had excruciating pain as soon as I entered the recovery room. This time I did not. I lost a lot of blood during the surgery, so they gave me blood all night. This one never hurt the way the other one did.
They also didn't throw me out of the hospital right away. I stayed for about a week after and they have done the followup rather than bouncing it back to the clinic. Also, last time they gave me 3 months of antibiotics, but this time they stopped and are using honey to cure it and fight germs.
So, this was a better experience but it has changed my life forever.
