Hello FB family and friends! If you follow me at all you may have noticed that there has been no activity from me for quite some time. The reason for this is that I have been very ill for most of the month of December. I became ill on Friday December the 5th with what I thought was food poisoning. By the following Monday I was in such pain that I had to call an ambulance to take me to the hospital where it was determined that I was suffering from a bacterial infection called Cellulitus. Not to be confused with cellulite which is the bumpy cottage cheese like flesh that some people have on the thigh and buttocks areas. The cellulitus was caused by a strep bacteria and it began in my lower left leg and sadly it found a home in my artificial left knee joint and began to spread through my body via my blood stream. Never in my life have I felt such excruciating pain. The pain became noticeable on Saturday the 6th of Dec and I was unable to sleep from Sunday morning all the way to day six of an eleven day hospital stay! No matter what position I tried, comfort and sleep were not to be found. As if this was not bad enough, the infection caused me to have to undergo a knee revision surgical procedure. What this means is that they had to reopen my knee, remove the plastic parts of my knee joint, clean up all the infection, throughly examine the metal parts and surrounding bone for traces of the bacteria, replace the plastic components with new ones, and sew me back together. I got out of the hospital on December 19th and am required to administer an antibiotic three times a day for the next six weeks. This antibiotic is very powerful and must be administered by IV. I left the hospital with a pic line in my right arm that I use three times per day the take the medicine. I must return to the infectious disease clinic weekly to have blood drawn and receive more of the antibiotic. This is getting kind of lengthy so I will cut this short. I am making progress but, I still have a long way to go. Obviously, I cannot work for now and this is both scary and boring. The prognosis is good and my orthopedic surgeon assures me that this second operation is 90 to 92% successful in stopping the infection...I sure do hope this proves to be the case. I wish all of you a very Happy, Healthy, and prosperous New Year and I appreciate you all keeping my in your thoughts and will Thank you in advance for the prayers I hope you will continue to send up to the Big Guy
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 01:08:26 +0000