You Pulling My Leg?

Today was a rough one! As for my treatment, that went fine. My time with doctors and nurses while receiving the 3rd consecutive day of anti-biotics via IV took less than an hour.

It was the rest of the afternoon leading up to the treatment that was rough. I arrived at the hospital at 1:30 for a 2 pm scheduled IV treatment. I though maybe if I got there a little early maybe we could get started and finish all the sooner.

Ah, but the best laid plans of barefoot mice and men often takes them on a path littered with tacks and broken glass. (Pardon my retooling of the old adage.) Today, for some reason, the emergency room was besieged with a lot of very ill and seriously injured patients. As should be the case, serious cases requiring emergency surgery and attention take precedent over everything. I understand that the hospital at one point was turning away arriving ambulances forcing them to find other hospitals.

The emergency arrivals included and elderly man who had broken his shoulder, possibly more, from a fall off a ladder. According to his wife, he was attemting to change a burnt-out lightbulb on the porch of his sister. The sister, who was vacationing in Florida, wouldn't be returning home until the end of April. The man chose that day to tackle the job.

Another man had a collapsed lung from falling onto a rock buried in a snowbank. It seems his leashed dog got its chain wrapped around a shrub in the yard. He was simply trying to free the animal so it could come back in the house when he slipped on the icy snow.

I'm going out on a limb here to guess that the next fellow was probably a redneck. It seems this good old boy decided to dive from from a third-story back porch into a snowbank. Apparently the snowbank wasn't quite as deep as he thought it might be. It seems he forgot about the out-door barbeque buried in snow somewhere out there in his backyard. HE FOUND IT. I can also only imagine that just before his heroic leap, he yelled to his wife, "Hey honey, watch this!"

Finally at 4 o'clock I was called to triage. I was first in line for the treatment area they call Fas-Trax. It would be still another hour before I was called in for treatment. It seems even then there were no treatment rooms available. So I was parked in a wheel chair in the hallway. The nurse appologized for the delay the lack of available rooms. She said they could check out my leg and administer the IV right there. I said that at that point in time they could sent out to the parking lot. I just wanted to get treated and go home!

The IV itself took all of 10 minutes. Then the doctor took out a Sharpie pen and drew an outline on my leg indicating the present edges of the redness there. From the lines drawn by the doctors on the previous visits it was clear that the infection is slowly receding. There has been over an inch of recession in those three days.

This doctor, however decided that I would at least need still another return there for another IV treatment. Originally, today was to have been the final day of hospital care. I was in no position to protest, the leg is still quite red and painful over most of its surface. Then shen added some frightening words, that if it doesn't start to improve faster, they will have to consider admitting me to keep me under closer observation.

I've still got a ways to go before I am back on my feet.

As was the case yesterday, I don't have a lot of stamina and this post took a lot of effort. Still, I want to keep a journal of this trying period. Sleep is calling - screaming!

No.1260