Home Again, Home Again, Too Tired to Jig...
Some random thoughts:
Room 3106 at Norwood Hospital is for people from Mansfield. Me, first night's roommate and second night's roommate were all from Mansfield. More specifically, the window side bed is for people from our house, since it's the exact bed Steve was in recently. Oh, and my nurse? She's our next door neighbor's sister.
Having your face explode is scary.
Being scared in the ER makes your blood presssure go up.
Having a high BP reading on admission makes them order a Cardiac diet.
Cardiac diets exclude caffeine.
Caffeine withdrawal causes headaches, which are easily confused with Scary Complications of Facial Explosion.
A strong cup of tea does wonders for the above problems.
Conclusion: The British were right, after all.
Hard to tell whether Dr. Jerk has pointed lack of respect for women, for nurses, or for patients. Looks like I get a triple whammy. But it was helped by the subtle indications that the nurses there all hate him, too, and then as an added bonus, the general doctor looked not just bothered, but actively scared of him. So I could at least entertain myself by tweaking this by trying to get her to come in at the same time as him and watching her struggle to find a legitimate reason not to. And then, later, I got her to write a prescription, suggested by my nurse, treating my infection in a way that assumes that we're all right and Dr. Jerk is wrong regarding the underlying cause. Just because it makes me happy to do so, even if he never sees that he's been effectively undermined (and certainly doesn't have any way of knowing how many of use contributed to the undermining). Oh, and because I really think we are right, and there'd be no downside to this treatment.
So, what happened to my face? Well, last February, I had a swelling under my eye. Went to the ER, got Keflex, and when it didn't help much, went back to the ER and got IV clindamycin and a week's worth of Bactrim. Last week, after not using it since that infection, I took out and used my sinus flush bottle to deal with increasing allergies. A few days later, I awoke with swelling under my eye.
I quickly (Dr. Jerk might say precipitously) concluded that the sinus rinse was the cause of the infection, which most likely travelled up the tearduct connecting my right eye and sinus. Perhaps the reusable bottle is hosting a nasty bug, perhaps I squirted it too hard, perhaps the duct on that side is particularly vulnerable. In any event, it seems a no-brainer as to the cause (and everyone other than Dr. Jerk promptly agreed) and the immediate goal/need was to make it go away. So I started the Bactrim again (advantage of the job). The swelling when I woke up Wed was way bigger, faster than it had been in February, but I was already planning to head in to the ER for the predicted bag of IV clindamycin.
Then it moved off-script, as this ER doc immediately stated they would be admitting me, explaining the dangers of such an infection moving into the actual eye, and from there having access to the brain. He also started a different IV antibiotic, but I don't know Abx well enough to compare. So I called to cancel work for the next day and inform various people. Up on the unit, I met Dr. Jerk, got a CT scan of my head to see if the infection was heading into nasty areas, had visits from Willa & Jeremiah, Wolf, Steve, and the lawyer processing our mortgage refinance (we signed as scheduled, just in a different venue), wqatched a lot of TV and got a few more bags of the Oxycillin and also started bags of IV Gentamycin, which I could actually feel working on the infection, so it was worth dealing with Dr. Jerk since he's the one who added it.
The next morning, Dr. Jerk said I'd have to stay another night since it wasn't improving enough yet. I was very upset and bummed, since that evening was my students' Pinning (nursing school graduation ceremony). But then I went to the bathroom and realized I looked like Quasimodo fighting off leprosy, and decided it wouldn't have been great to go, either, even if it felt silly to stay in a hospital just because I needed an IV hooked up every few hours (after all, I have abundant people in my life who could do that for me).
Friday morning it looked and I felt much better. I had that glorious "oh, so this is what having energy feels like, now I remember" feeling. Everyone agreed, and I was sprung by noon. Did some shopping on the way home, took Wolf grocery shopping (her birthday party this weekend), and by evening was tangibly remembering that I was actually just getting over being really sick. So, not too spiffy on the energy front, but still, improved and improving. The skin around my eye is still quite red, and dry, and sagging from being so distended.
So that was my week.