Karen and Erik

Sorry Fitzy, but the internet connection at the hospital was spotty at best so I couldn’t post from there. Just got home now.

For those of you who haven’t heard yet (and sorry you’re finding out this way), I was in the hospital most of this week with a mysterious case of cellutis. The latest theory from the infectious disease doctor is that I got a strep infection at the gym. However, they didn’t really have anything to culture, and if the blood cultures they took out of my arms do show Strep/Staph, then I have a lot worse things to worry about, as it means the infection made it through my entire system. So we’re hoping for negative results on everything that hasn’t already come back yet.

Anyway, on to the story. While rocking out hard at the Van Halen concert (and no, the doctor said while Van Halen is awesome, they can’t cause a strep infection. to which I responded, “have you seen Eddie lately?”) last thursday, I started feeling sick Friday morning. I knew I was starting a fever, and left work early thinking I was coming down with the flu. I had some pretty common flu like symptoms.

Fast forward to Saturday morning, where the fever was responding to over-the-counter meds and I thought I was doing better, I noticed a little swelling in my upper thigh area. Didn’t think much of it at the time, but on saturday night, I noticed for the first time some discoloration and swelling on my left leg. I finally relented that something besides the flu might be going on, and Karen and I went to Urgent Care first thing Sunday morning.

The Urgent Care doctor took about 8 viles worth of blood, and the 20 minute tests all came back ok. I hadn’t cut myself, hadn’t had any recent trauma, and my white blood count was normal. She put me on some antibiotics and told me to keep an eye on it. After a day of antibiotics, I woke up Monday morning and saw that the swelling was almost completely gone and the redness hasn’t gotten any worse. So, with Monday being the 1st and our busiest day of the month due to monthly closing, I went in to work.

I noticed throughout the course of the day, my leg was continuing to swell, to the point now where it was about double the size of the other one. Yes, grossing out my co-workers was fun and I was still able to keep my fever down though the Ibuprofen I was taking. I wasn’t in any pain, but the leg was hard to walk on and I knew it was time to go in.

Karen met me at the ER where it took them 3 hours to get me back. I missed my dose of Ibuprofen while in the waiting room, and could feel my temperature rising badly. When I was finally taken back, my temperature was 104.1 and my leg was so swollen I remember feeling a couple of times that when I put any weight on my leg that it felt like there was no where for anything to go and it was going to burst…and this wasn’t a painful feeling, just that it was that full of whatever. Weird.

So I spent the next 3 days in the hospital, getting poked and prodded regularly. Lots of blood was taken, I got a dose of IV antibiotics every 6 hours. The only thing that really sucked was the heparin shots in the belly, and not because of the needle. The heparin itself had a nasty habit of burning after it was injected, and then the tissue around it got a little sore and hard. And they kept sticking me in the same area, so that didn’t help.

But I’m out now, and no more heparin. I’ve got no real restrictions other than common sense. I’ll probably go in to work for a few hours tomorrow to try and get a little caught up, but more to get the “hey! You’re back! What happened?” hallway conversations out of the way so I can really get started on Monday.

Alright, time for rest. later.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 7:43 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.