When It Rains It Pours!

I am sure you have heard that expression. "When it rains, it pours!"

That's how it's been since Thanksgiving! Health wise at least! In my last post I talked about going to the ER after Thanksgiving with gall bladder problems. I did see the family doctor and then the surgeon. The surgeon isn't convinced that it's my gall bladder. He wants me to have a CAT scan (tomorrow.) As I type this I am drinking some delicious banana flavored barium. Delicious- NOT! But it's a bit better than no flavor! I'm getting a CAT scan with contrast tomorrow. I wonder if I can drive myself home after that?

Also ~last Monday my husband D started having a stiff right knee. He already got both knees replaced last year. By Tuesday he was using his cane again and by Wednesday he was seeing our friend the Physical Therapist. (He actually is a good friend of ours.) He was getting electric stim (stimulation) and ice (I think) to take down the swelling. On Friday after I saw the surgeon, he went to the orthopedic doctor while I went shopping for supplies for our youth center. He called me just when I had gotten back and was unpacking the car into the center. 

He said he was in the hospital getting ready for emergency surgery! I dropped what I was doing, my helper said she'd finish for me, and I rushed to the hospital. Good thing, even though this is a small town, we do have a hospital here. ---The ER had no idea where he was or that he was even there, so I went around to the front desk.

They said that he had been taken to a room upstairs. So I rushed up stairs only to find him being walked out of the room to same day surgery. They had mistakingly taken him upstairs. A friend of ours who is a nurse in Same Day Surgery had come back in for something after her shift and had seen my hubby D leave to go up to a room. She asked if he wasn't supposed to be back downstairs in the Same Day Surgery, (which he was) so the nurse and myself walked him to the elevator and back to where he started. He initialed his knee in the elevator. 

Everything was a rush! Nurses taking blood, nurses asking health histories, someone making copies of his insurance card and asking more questions, him signing papers and a doctor from there asking health questions all over again. I helped him get changed into the attractive hospital gown and they hooked him up with an IV. He had to get a spinal because he had had pizza for lunch. The orthopedic surgeon came in talked to both of us about the infection in his knee and told us how they were going to clean it out and he was whisked off to surgery! I was left there with his clothes and my head spinning! 

What had caused the infection in his knee was a tooth implant he had the day before Thanksgiving. When you have an artificial joint you have to be very careful whenever you have dental work. He had to take antibiotics before the dentist and afterwards too, but the infection still set into the bone. He had had a metal peg put in his jaw and would have the actual tooth mounted on it later. 

If he hadn't gotten attention when he did, he would have lost the artificial knee! He said the doctor just about keeled over when he saw his knee and felt the heat coming from it. He said he had only lost one other knee to a dental implant, and NO my husband was not going to lose the knee. He didn't.

The did it laporscopically . They drained the knee then flushed it out with 3 liters of a mixture of saline solution and antibiotic. It took all of about 40 minutes in the OR. 

 I just love it when you are sitting in the surgical waiting room by yourself and the phone starts ringing on the desk. It's like- should I answer it or not? Is it for me..... or not? - I answered it and it was the surgeon telling me the results of surgery. Everything had gone well.

So.... my husband D spent the rest of that Friday night and up until Monday late afternoon in the hospital with an IV and a drain for more fluid that was on the knee.

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              (one week later......)

So.. my hubby has been taking lots of antibiotics intravenously. One in the bag on the pole every twelve hours and another just into the pick line that he has in his arm and then yet another orally. It is wearing him out. No pain though. This will go on for 5 more weeks! We have had some doctor visits and nurses come by the house with instructions and to change the pick line. Also someone dropping off supplies. 

He is not allowed to lift more than 5 pounds so he got out of putting up the tree today! Our son D from Philly came over and helped me with the tree after we went out to pick it out and bring it home. It's a biggin!  

That's my son D. No-- he would not smile! Oh well..... bah humbug!

So... I've had my cat scan with contrast- not a lot of fun but didn't take too long at the hospital, and I see the doc on Thursday to see what he has to say. -- I think this blog has run on and on.. sorry bout that. - Just a lot of hectic stuff round here. Decorating the tree tomorrow will be a real treat! 

Hope you are all enjoying your Christmas season- or what ever you may celebrate. - I am headed up to an early bedtime so I can rise early and put out my new bird feeders in the A.M. - Night all!