More ER
Monday Nicole developed a pain in her right thigh; by bedtime she had modest fever; and by 2AM her right foot was swollen. We got up and searched the internet and decided it sounded a lot like cellulitis. She called the GH consulting nurse who said we should get ourselves (well Nicole) to a hospital post-haste, as it could also be a bloodclot which could move to more interesting locations. We got ourselves ready, woke our roommate to say we where we we were going. Just before we left the consulting nurse called back to say if Nicole had a heart attack on the way we should call 911. Not advice I really needed. I gave her my cell phone in the car after it was determined that hers had died, but it wasn’t necessary. Traffic was good and we got to the dreaded Virginia Mason about 4AM. She filled out some paperwork, and was seen relatively quickly. They hooked her up to a computer, and took some blood. The service was good, but still there was a lot of waiting. Cute nurse 1 thought it was likely a clot, the Dr. thought cellulitis. After an ultrasound it was pretty obvious not a blood clot. They took some more blood for cultures, gave her intravenous antibiotics and we were out by 7AM, needing to see infectious diseases at Group Health Central, after her cardiao ultrasound at 10 am. We went home for an hour and a half and then back to Capital Hill. The ultrasound was sort of cool it looked like little aliens dancing in her chest. We both thought so. No results on that yet. We went to see the infectious disease DR, who claimed to be happy to be missing a meeting, and he prescribed oral antibiotics, rather than the pic line the ER DR had suggest she might get. We went back home and she put her foot as per DR’s orders. She gets to skip work for the rest of this week, and possibly more depending on when she can actually get a shoe on her swollen foot. Today she was doing a lot better pain-wise, but was still very inflamed and swollen.
This trip wasn’t as scary (for me) as was the one at the beginning of the month. Its good to theoretically know what’s going on, but still the possibility of recurrence here is high, and we’ve seen really nasty things happen starting from similar circumstances.
Nicole in Paris 2008
Originally published at my other blog: You might think that... You can comment here or there.