The Dog Days of Summer have traditionally been associated with disease,infection,ill luck and confusion. Last Wednesday I walked into my living room and one of our Jack Russell pups jumped on my left ankle with little paws just a scrabbling.I felt a scratch and pushed him away.Fast forward to Saturday when I wake at 4am with a fever,cold chills,the shakes etc.Me and the wife think summer cold/flu and start dosing me up with vitamin C,echinacea,cold medicene and pile blankets and afghans on top of me.Saturday afternoon I notice my left leg is red during one of the few times I awoke.Sunday afternoon/evening my leg has developed swelling,purple coloraton and an area of blood blisters around the ankle while I have been out cold. I decide to head to the best of the urgent care centers .I get there an hour before they close and there is one person in front of me.They spend 45 minutes registering me and have me take a seat.While registering 4 more people come in and the staff busy themselves closing the blinds etc.Then they take me to the back where the Dr on duty put on some gloves talked to me briefly ,ran her hand down my leg.They then handed a prescription for 1 antibiotic and hustle me out the door.Odd this medical group loves iv's they'll give you an iv for a sprained ankle.I figured I would at least get a shot of antibiotics before I left.I guess I should have got there earlier in the day for competent treatment. Two days later I follow up with my regular doc who takes one look at my leg and asks WTH? and questioned me about my treatment at the medcare and sends me to the ER for IV antibiotics.Where I never see a dr and the nurses push 3 bags of antibiotics through me.They do a ton of labs,which show no sepsis ,no blood borne pathogens just skin infection and abcess and send me home. I follow back up with my Doc the next day .She changes my antibiotics,drops one and adds 2.She asks "they didn't do a doppler study?"No maa'm.Okay I am sending you back to get a doppler study done.........arrrghh.I go back to the hospital and park to eat a sandwich and call the hospital switchboard to check which of the 7 entrances or 2 outbuildings I need to go to.I ask which entrance do I need to go to for the doppler lab."did you say dobbler?we don't have a dobbler.No maa'm doppler,d-o-p-p-l-e-r.I don't think we have one of those.then I hear her ask somebody who tells her yes and it is in the cardio-pulmonary dept.She relays that info to me and I ask her where do I need to go?To the main entrance and go to registration.I drive down and do that.They then direct me to the cardio rehab unit on the opposite side of the hospital.I drive over there and am told that I needed to be at the cardio dept next to registration.I head back to where I came from and ring the bell and wait a few minutes for a nurse and hand her my paperwork.She then informs me that I am at the wrong cardio dept.I am starting to get a bit exasperated,my leg is killing me.So I ask her to show me where I need to go.She walked me outside and pointed to a door 30 foot from where I originally parked.Great. I hobble in with my hiking staff and walk into cardio-pulmonary waiting room and REGISTRATION.That's right I did not have to go to main registration.Finally after over an hour I am in the right place,which is where I started out at.I get the test done and mention to the tech that my doc was unsure why I had not had the test done already.The tech replied we do dopplers all the time for the ER.They tell me to go home,so the doppler test showed no blood clots causing the swelling.I go home elevate my aching leg and take half of a pain pill.
Sounds like you got the High Tech Run Around. Granny would have started with the pain killer, and got around to the other stuff later.
So, what would you do differently next time? Apply some cheap alcohol to the scratch and maybe a little more internally?
Follow up. Had to go to a wound care specialist.I told my wife "he's going to scrape the wound" ,she said "no they only do that to burn victims". He debrided the wound. The nurse sprayed a deadener on my ankle to deaden it.The Dr took about 20 minutes to come in to the room,then talked 5-10 minutes and proceeded to take a gauze pad and scrub the area of blood blisters and burst them.Then he took a triangular metal scraper and scraped the area.Needless to say I felt a good bit of this as the dr had waited so long to get started.I had a death grip on my waking stick with one hand and a death grip on the top of my head with my other hand,as I gritted my teeth and stared at the ceiling.Then the nurse applied some cream and wrapped the area.I was given another antibiotic rx and silvadene cream rx. I called my wife and gave her a told you so.Went home and took a pain killer.
Yes I would have.This has cost me several hundred dollars of missed work and I am dreading when the medical bills starting to roll in.
@urrlord I liked your post because I'm glad you got treatment and hopefully staved off further issues. I'm empathetic enough to have felt the ghost of the procedure as you described it. Hope the pain meds kick in and you rest well.
Amen @RyX . I hope you get well soon @urrlord . It sucks being out of work, and having hospital bills.
Just an update.I wore a real shoe on my left foot for the first time since the infection occured.3 different antibiotics and 5 courses of use..3 debriding treatments and it appears that the infection is gone.Just have some swelling left,suppose to keep it elevated as much as possible.I have missed about 600 bucks of work and have just found out that my hours are being cut back to basically working every other weekend.This will really sucketh with the medical bills starting to come in.I may have to find apart-time job to supplement my part-time job that is supplementing my retirement ck.
