I'm starting to lose grip on reality. The days pass like a haze and one bleeds into another. I'm still in hospital since being re-admitted after the infection in the major wound on the inside of my left foot set in.
It's now one month since the accident.
I think this diary photo says a lot about how I'm feeling.
The wound is a weeping mess and the surgeons who operated on me originally are talking a lot about what to do. The infection is pretty bad. I have a series of operations scheduled one day apart from each other.
Surgery 3 goes Ok, they aren't convinced they got the wound cleaned out though.
Surgery 4 has another crack at it but I am starting to lose skin elasticity and they are having trouble closing the wound.
It sounds dire. There are more people involved than I can remember. Special Infectious Disease ward, Surgeons, Nurses, I dunno.
It's looking worse than ever and just gets worse with every revision.
After surgery 5 I wake up with a machine attached to my leg and it sounds like one of the aquarium pumps I have in my fish tank. Brrrr brrrrr brrrrr.....
I don't know what the fuck is happening but it hurts like crazy and feels really tight, like a tearing, pulling sensation at the skin and it's hot and angry. I start to feel just a little bit sorry for myself and wonder what's going to happen next.
A nurse arrives and explains that I have a 'vacuum pump' attached to an open wound on the interior wound where they lost too much skin during the last revision surgery.
It keeps the wound open but applies a gentle suction continuously to remove any infection that may be weeping from the wound.
My leg is fully wrapped again so I can't see what it looks like and I have to remain elevated again and not move too much.
Specialists arrive and ask about my allergic reaction to penicillin. I explain that I do have an allergic reaction and last time I took it I got mildly anaphylactic and broke out in a hive like rash all over my chest and neck.
After some conflagration they decide the best form of attack for this infection is to do a hardcore IV drug called Vancomycin which I will be hooked up to every 12 hours for three days. It's around 2pm when they start it so at 2am it will be administered again, and then repeated for three days simultaneously.
I feel like shit. They give me Endone freely and it kinda helps but not really.
They come back in during the Vancomycin infusion and advise me that the only way to be sure that this infection is under control is to desensitize me to Penicillin and that's going to start straight away after the Vanc is done. It's a series of tiny doses of Penicillin administered orally that gradually increase over 12hrs to make sure I handle it and I will be monitored constantly for any reactions.
Once that's over I can go home again.
Nurses will come and take off the vacuum dressing once every two to three days and the pin sites every day, I feel kinda a relieved because being home is so much better than being in hospital.
I'm given Tramadol, Endone and Paracetamol by the truck loads, and a huge box containing these new Vacuum dressings. They have to be completely changed including the lines and the dressing and I am told it will be painful as it is an open wound. Take the drugs, bite down on an ice cream stick, suck it up princess.
The penicillin desensitisation goes well and I have a bucket load of those that I have to take three times a day. I feel like a walking chemist, or a wheelchair chemist.
I just want to go home.
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