Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Ugh....what day is it?

Ok so life has decided to hand me a bowl of lemons. As soon as I unbury myself my happy ass is going to buy a bottle of vodka and have some lemon drop shots! Just the short breakdown:

- My Dr. signed off on the multiple visits for my staph infection. He said the wound was healing well and he told me what to watch for. That night I moved the wrong way and opened up the wound...ugh! The good news is that infection didn't restart and I'm just sore. I can live with that.

-My dad had a biopsy to check for prostrate cancer. This is after a month and a half of a Dr. blowing off my dads calls pertaining to the test results. He had the biopsy Thursday. By Friday afternoon he had a temp and wasn't feeling well. By Friday evening he had passed a few blood clots but the Dr. wasn't too worried. Late Friday night he temp went up and he was shaking uncontrollably. My mom took him to the ER because his heart was also acting up. They checked him out and sent him home! He wound up returning to the ER on Saturday when his temp went up. He was admitted that evening and started on IV antibiotics. His temp went down to 99* and we thought things were looking up. Fast forward a few hours and his temp went up to 102.5*- the highest it had been. Its been up and down since. His temp will stay down and we think they're going to release them and then he spikes again. We're now waiting for the infectious disease Dr. to show up and let us know what is happening.

-Princess Bear (PB) got 2 vaccinations yesterday. She was a real trooper and I'm very proud of her. The problem is that like me PB doesn't do very well with shots and has a big knot in each arm and is in a fair amount of pain. For the child who rarely complains I'm a bit worried. She wanted some tylenol but the most recent reports say that giving a child tylenol after shots is lessening the affect of some immunizations. My poor kid is having one hell of a time.

-I have an IEP meeting for PB in a little bit and I'm so worried. The local school district has pink slipped all the therapists and no one has any idea of what is going on. I have left messages for the interim School Superintendent and he finally left a message yesterday. Apparently he things a message will suffice....he doesn't know me...yet!

So that is the rundown on things here. Anybody else want to join me for a few shots?

Sarah

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Staph Infection

Ok- so it was mentioned to me this weekend that I've been ignoring this blog. I'M SORRY!!!! I have been concentrating on my other blog & and trying to get well. The following is a post about my staph infection that I shared on the other blog and I thought....hmmm....I should share this. Please share this with others you know as well. You don't have to link back here- just copy & paste if its easier. I just am still amazed about how much I've gone through for something that is relatively common but not much is known about it. So without further ado here it is!

Staph Infection

Ok- hopefully this doesn't cross the bounds into too much information but I thought since this happened to me & someone else I know that maybe a good general warning might be worthwhile! As I mentioned last friday I have been dealing with a staph infection. Let me tell you- it is NOT fun and it is REALLY painful! The amazing thing was that I had been at the Dr. with the staph infection and didn't mention because I thought it was a pimple! Yes you heard me right- I thought it was a pimple. Nothing more than an annoying little zit so I didn't mention it to her and consequently treatment wasn't started until 4 days later. In retrospect I could have saved myself so much time and agony if I knew the warning signs of a staph infection! Now this entire post is just from my personal experience and by no means am I a Dr but if you have something that looks like a pimple but is painful you might want to mention it to your Dr. Here is a bit of what the timeline looked like for me. Everytime I tell this to a different Dr I wonder if it would have progressed this much if I would have mentioned it the friday before.

Feb 26- Saw Dr. about a sinus infection. Didn't mention pimple like thing on my stomach.
Feb 27 & 28- was irritated by thing so I tried warm compresses
March 1- decided I was as smart as a Dr and tried performing surgery on myself (clearly never a good idea!) By the evening I was in very bad pain & called the Dr. after hours line. An appointment was made for the next morning.
March 2- Congrats you have a staph infection. Started Bactrim and told to apply warm compresses & come back on Thurs.
March 4- Returned for follow up. At that point my Dr. prescribed a second antibiotic to be taken with the Bactrim and a painkiller. A follow up appointment was made for Monday.
March 5- The infection had changed so much in 24 hours I didn't feel comfortable going into the weekend without my Dr. checking it again. Dr. agreed that the medical intervention was necessary but not quite yet (there wasn't enough infection centralized to cut into- gross I know!) An appointment was made with a surgeon for Monday afternoon. I was told if the wound opened over the weekend to get to the hospital as it would need to be professionally cleaned & packed.
March 6- still in a lot of pain and would was weeping but not open. The infection was very centralized by this point in time.
March 7- Again gross I'm sorry but the wound went from weeping to oozing and I began to fear that healthy tissue would get infected so I went to the ER. Dr. said I was very close to it breaking opening and would have been in before morning anyway. The Dr. gave me a local which is a horror story all its own but I won't share that! Then it was surgically opened, a sample taken in case the antibiotics don't finish clearing it up. The the wound was cleaned, irrigated and dead tissue was taken off. After that it was packed and I was told to keep my appointment with my regular Dr. and the surgeon.
March 8- My primary care told me to continue antibiotics and make a follow up appointment to have the wound repack depending on what the surgeon did that afternoon. Surgeon had no bedside manner whatsoever and yanked packed out without even warning me- grrrrrrrrrrr! After that he said it looked good & to follow up in a week.

All of this because it looked like I had a zit on my stomach and thought it wasn't worth mentioning to the Dr.
Moral of the story- if you're not sure have it checked!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

I admit it- I'm a big baby!

I have a staph infection & it HURTS!!! I mean like a bunch! I've been sleeping almost constantly trying to give the antibiotics & my body a chance to kick this thing. I go back to my Dr. tomorrow for him to see how I'm responding & if it isn't to his liking I'm going to be admitted for IV antibiotics. This would be bad on SO many levels. Princess Bear (PB) would not do well with me being in the hospital and my parents wouldn't do well with taking care of her for a few days. I'm tired & whiny and just want this stupid thing to go away! Off for another nap!

Monday, March 1, 2010

Parental Guilt Sucks!

So from my last post you can see we FINALLY had new pictures of Princess Bear taken. We usually do a couple sets of pics at Christmas time but she was way too sick this year. One of the problems with taking pictures of Princess Bear is that she's on an eye drop that keeps her right eye constantly dialated so in theory her right eye will stregthen and we won't have vision loss like we've had on in the past. Well if you take pictures like that it looks REALLY weird. Her Dr is very good about this and took her off her eye drops in Sept. thinking we'd do pics and then resume right after Christmas. As it often happens with the best laid plans things went totally awry. So she's been off the drops for a long time & loving it. Long enough that she forgot how the drops really were. Last night was the first night of using them again and my heart just broke over and over for my poor baby. She has extremely limited vision in her left eye & the drops basically render the right eye useless. At one point last night she woke up to go to the bathroom and she was so upset that she just sat on the potty until I went back in that side of the house. I got her back to bed & was cuddling her and of course my mom starts bitching that I have things to do. Ok, I do but right now I think my priority should be making my baby feel better about what is going on. UGH!!! Fast forward to this morning and PB is still not totally acclimated to the vision situation and is repeatedly rubbing her eye. I try explaining that rubbing won't make it any easier that the drops are just working the way they are suppossed to. My mom then decides its the right time to bitch because I had PB off the eye drops for so long. Please shoot me now!