The Staph Aftermath

Life is a roller coaster sometimes, and you just never know when the ups and downs may come. It keeps you on your toes, keeps you thinking, wondering, pondering, planning, asking questions, and sometimes, leaves you hanging without any resolution whatsoever.

So, last week, as you all know, I was in the hospital for 3 days for surgery and recovery to clean out the incision on my knee. I really thought that was it - send me home with Antibiotics that I needed to self infuse through my PICC line, and 6 weeks later, they would pull out the PICC line and I'd be good as new. Well, no such luck.

Wednesday, October 12th, I came back to the ER because I thought my PICC line was infected - it was NOT looking good, and it started to hurt really bad. They drew blood and that showed no infection, so they scheduled 2 tests (Lower and Upper Extremity Venous Imaging tests), which is basically an ultrasound of your main arterial veins leading to your heart (arms and legs). Now, remember, I was just in the ER on September 17th because I thought I had a blood clot in my leg, and they did not find anything. Well, no such luck this time..... not only did they find a blood clot in my right calf (as I suspected on the 17th) but they found another one under my PICC line. They took a bunch of cultures, more blood, and pulled out the PICC line because it was a danger to the blood clot. Boy, am I having the most crazy luck (unluck really)!!

Another hospital stay for me. Joy! Mom and I drove to the hospital around 10:30. I did not get a bed / room until 1am. Talk about a long day of waiting! (Don't worry - I sent mom home around 8pm, she was so tired poor thing!).

So, more tests, more pokes, prods, more doctors. I was put on a constant Heparin drip as well as a constant Saline drip. Every 8 hours they give me my antibiotics for my staph infection, every so many hours they draw more blood to see where we are with infections, hemoglobin, PTT, INR and a bunch of other abbreviations. The good news is that I do not have any additional infections and that I no longer have a staph infection (though things are still oozing but getting much better). But, my blood is still not thin enough for them to let me go home.

At one point yesterday, the nurse decided I was on "Contact" - so basically, that only lasted about 3 hours. I think they looked up the results and saw that I no longer had staph and took the signs down when I was asleep. She may have told me my staph was gone, but I don't think so. I only found out the morning of 10/15.

The staff thought I would only have to stay 1 night..... then I had to stay a second night.... now, I am on my third day, and still waiting for my blood to thin out more (for my med folks - I need my INR to be between 2.0 - 2.5, and I am currently at a 1.16.. so not close!). I was hoping to go home today..... the nurse does not think my blood will make that big of a jump to thin out so I can leave... so another night on the docket for me!