I'm back.

Happy National Dough-Nut Day!

Whoa.

Okay, I totally didn't mean to disappear.  The deal is: Last Sunday, I noticed a tiny red mark on my calf.  Tiny.  Like an ingrown hair.  Totally insignificant. 

Monday, it looked a little irritated, so I put some triple antibiotic ointment on it and covered it with a Band-Aid so it wouldn't get irritated.  

Tuesday morning, I woke up and discovered that my leg had pretty much blown up.  Red, swollen, seriously ouchy, the works.  Called the doctor.  He diagnosed a staph infection, gave me antibiotics, and told me to come back in two days if it wasn't better.  It didn't really get any worse, but I wasn't sure it was getting better, either, so I went back on Thursday.  He agreed with me, and referred me to a surgeon for the next day (Friday) to have it "cleaned out".  (Don't think about that too hard.  It's pretty gross.)

The leg actually looked better on Friday but I went anyway, because it was definitely not the kind of thing I wanted to ignore.  The nurse practitioner shot the leg full of lidocaine and actually cut out a small sliver of, um, meat.  It turns out there wasn't actually a pocket; it was just sort of an infected sponge of . . . leg.  I have to say, though: Lidocaine is amazing stuff.  I could hardly tell it was my own leg they were dissecting.

We stopped at Texas Art Supply and I rewarded myself with a Schleich kitten trio for not freaking out at the surgeon's office:


This is so detailed, it even has an actual kitten underneath, not just a creepy flat surface:


They sent me home with pain meds and a wound-care routine, which made me super glad I used to be a veterinary assistant so stuffing antiseptic packing into open cuts doesn't freak me out too much.  It also made me glad for Tramadol.  My dog takes Tramadol for arthritis pain.  Now I know why she's been in such a good mood lately.  And why she sleeps so much.  

I had orders to stay home and off the leg so it wouldn't swell up again.

Sunday, I got righteously sick.  I don't know if it was the pain medication, the antibiotics, or something unrelated (like a touch of food poisoning) but the on-call doctor prescribed something else so I could at least take my medications.  Two out of three meds caused drowsiness, so I pretty much slept for four days.  Mom commented on how bright and clear my eyes are.

The nurse practitioner gave me an A+ for wound-care yesterday.  I rewarded myself with Schleich arctic foxes:


I justify arctic fox-related items because they sort of look like my dog.

Today is my first day back.  I still don't know what caused the abscess in the first place.  Popular opinion votes for a brown recluse spider bite, but I'm not convinced it was serious enough to be that (unless it was a very small or very apathetic brown recluse).  I will encourage you not to Google brown recluse bites for comparison: It will give you nightmares.

Also, I forgot to post this guy.  Josef Originals large tiger cub (about eight inches long):


Comments

PepperReed said…
Holy COW!! I'd wondered where you went... Glad you are on the mend, tho'. My BIL had a similar incident last year; foot sore, no mark, 36 hrs later: leg hot w/red streaks radiating up to knee. YIKES! No idea what got him either.

Sleep = Good. But pain meds can make you SO sick; that's some heavy duty stuff you were taking, I'm sure.
Mostly, I have zero tolerance for medications because I so rarely have to take any (slip me a couple of Benadryl and watch me try to sit up straight in a chair. Very amusing). I doubt the dosage was particularly heavy (I'm only taking ibuprofen in the evenings now, before I have to change the bandage), but I've never taken narcotic anything in my life so it's probably small wonder if that's what made me sick. I wasn't even taking as much as I was allowed since the bite actually hurt a lot less after the surgery than it had before.
Andrea said…
Yikes -- scary about the staph ... I wonder if it was in fact MRSA? I had something like that a couple of years ago ... on my FACE unfortunately. (Thanks acne, that's one more nice gift you've given me.)

And re: brown recluse spider bites -- my workplace saw fit to send out an email bristling with photographic examples as a warning. So glad I didn't open that one while eating lunch.
As a fellow acne sufferer, I really don't need to hear that! And what a terrible thing to do to your employees! Ugh! I just have about a 1/2 by 1-inch, and shrinking, sort of gouge in my leg. Looks like a deep scrape. Really not bad.

However, I just got home and realized that the wool jacket I wear at work when I forget my turtlenecks rubbed my neck totally raw, so I look horrible right now, anyway, even with the leg hidden. Fantastic.
amy said…
Staph is so scary! And everywhere. I had staph in the form of folliculitis over a year ago and no longer can shave my underarms. Yay.
amy said…
Also, so glad you are okay!