♥  2nd Lupus Hospital Stay – 5 days  (December 30th-January 3rd)  ♥ 

So, I probably did too much going out to Hershey’s Park and all the shopping around the city (outside)…. but I ended up with bronchitis. And so I went to the ER (because there are NO Urgent Care clinics in Philly) Friday the 29th, to make a quick stop for antibiotics, Xray, etc. They told me my Xray was good, I had bronchitis (not to mention a cough that sounded like a SEAL).  They ended up giving me a nebulizer breathing treatment, and a prescription for antibiotics and an inhaler.

The next day I felt a hundred times worse and since I had family in town, after Physical Therapy, I snuck a quick appointment into my primary care’s office.  They snuck me right on in direct admittance to the hospital….. I practically had a room and a bed ready for me before I crossed the street to get there. So that was fun. I had a nice view of city hall out my window, and NO roommate!

Once they saw me (and heard my SEAL COUGH)  they started me on 3 IV Antibiotics (Azithromycin, Vancomyacin, and Zosyn– in case anyone cares to know which) and pulled me off the Bactrum Antibioitic the ER had given me the day before. They also started me on nebulizer treatments every 4 or 5 hours, which was later changed to every 8 hours when they put me on a 24 hour masked 50% Oxygen cool mist humidifier. That was pretty much it the whole time I was there. Vital signs, pills for lung pain and coughing, other pills, respiratory therapist visits. The end. No, just kidding.Luckily I had given my sister and her family a big hug goodbye, because they were heading back home to sunny Florida that afternoon.  Anyways, I had a room and a bed on the Med/Surg floor really quickly, but I don’t think I saw a doctor or my nurse for probably 3 or 4 hours. Strange.

Other than my bronchitis, they were concerned about two things. 1) A possible blood clot in my lower right calf- which had been super painfully cramped for a few days — that turned out fine, after a 3 hour ultrasound and all. But they told me to watch it, because it was a little swollen and I had tiny leg veins for clots to hide in. And apparently lupus gives you a higher for chance for blood clots.   2) My ‘abscess‘ thing on my stomach.  It started out as a little white dot surrounded by a red circle like the size of a ‘big’ quarter, surrounded by a white circle. However by the time I was actually in the hospital it was a small black hole, surrounded by red skin, probably the size of  a large tablespoon spoon. [Check out the photo on the left] And some of  the parts in the ‘red zone’ were rock hard. Oh AND IT HURT LIKE THE DICKENS! The weird part was if you pressed on the side of my stomach, or way below the spot on my stomach, it still made me literally scream in pain–at the location of the red spot.

An infectious disease doctor came in, and touched it and stuff, and told me he thought it was a PHLEGMON. I asked if he could spell that, and he DREW me a picture!

So, here’s a picture of my re-draw that explains it a bit—>

I got to watch the whole thing, thanks to local anesthesia. It was crazy- he cut it open, maybe an inch wide, but he went deep. INCHES deep. .  He cleaned it up and then reached in with his clamps and PULLED out gross, infected, interesting stuff. Not too much, but enough. It was rather amazing how he dug around in there so grotesquely His scissors were the clampy kind and he essentially reached in the hole he cut, and did this circle type thing feeling around in there under all the red stuff to make sure there was no more. And in the end it looked like a small stab wound,  next to the ‘folliculitis’ spot that originated the infection. Then he didn’t stitch it or anything because he said it needs to drain and heal from the inside out- wouldn’t want to keep any more infection in there! So he bandaged it up with a simple piece of gauze.

Here is my ‘owwie’ now, looking pretty good. Smaller in size. I put a size comparison pencil for fun  I will make the two photos thumbnails in case you get grossed out. You can click them if you’d like to see bigger!!

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New Symptom?

XoXo BeccaBoo