Infection Fight

I wrote my last post on June 24th and just posted it. Things were slow and there was not much to report, so I was not in a hurry. Well my condition has changed again since then, and I will now try to keep this as up to date as I possibly can. Apparently, unbeknown to me, on around June 30th, I developed a nice infection in my jawline near my incision site while we were in Tampa visiting Andrea's parents. This was a complete 28 days after my operation and it came as sort of a surprise to say the least. I thought I was on the road to complete recovery and the possibility of this occurring was slim. I decided to see a Dr. in Tampa as soon as possible, after spending all night chasing drugs down in Tampa to see if we could handle this here. Well after hearing my long story and history, he recommended that I fly home at once to see my own doctors, since they had the best idea of what may be going on with me, or he was going to check me in to the hospital himself. I was on the next flight out of there which was on the first of July, and in my Dr's office on the morning of the 2nd. It was an obviously some type of skin infection and we decided to attack it as aggressively as we could. Since the family was still and Tampa, I agreed to check in to the hospital and treat this as fast and as best as possible and to be done with it and home for the Fourth of July. Needless to say, it did not work out like I had hoped. I spent July 4th in the hospital still dealing with this stubborn infection. I watched the runners going up cardiac hill from my hospital room window during the Peachtree road race. Andrea arrived home that day the fourth, and I was finally able to go home the following day, Sunday the 5th. I had some prescriptions filled and was done with setback we had thought. Well I woke up Monday morning and it was like a golf ball was stuck in my mouth. It was if I had been punched in the jaw. The previous three nights in the hospital had all been for naught. I was back to where it was when I started the whole process six days earlier. This infection was back with a vengeance. Andrea took me to the doctor once again that morning. Fortunately, she had been through something similar to this already with her mother who is a breast cancer survivor going on 9 years. We told the doctor we wanted to see a infection disease doctor and he agreed with us, because we did not think he really new what to do next for me and out of his field of expertise. That new doctor saw me the same day, after I had a CT scan of the site to see if they could figure out what was going on. They discovered no fluid buildup to get a sample from, so they assumed it was the worst type of infection, which in this case means staph. Now this is a nasty type of infection and they do not really know how I got it. Most likely it was a few days before my symptoms appeared. She did have a different game plan for beating it though, and it involved some very strong antibiotics and steroids to reduce the swelling. The good thing in this case, was I would be able to do them at home. First course of action was to get a IV in my arm that was going to be used to administer the drugs. Its called a Pict line. Well knowing my luck, the nurse could not get the line in while in the office, so this meant a date with the radiology department for them to put it in with the help of there ultrasound machine to see things better. This was finally done on Friday the 10th, and I received my antibiotics before that with just regular IV into my arm. I have now been receiving my meds for 10 days and have seen a vast improvement. The swelling is way down. I am still on some type of pain med for the pain that I do have. It seems to radiate in my jaw area like a tooth ache and I also have pain when trying to open my mouth to eat a sandwich or something similar. Since seeing the doctor again today, we agreed to another 7 days of antibiotics to make sure we get this for certain this time around. The only way to make sure of that, is for overkill, so it does not have a chance to come back. I might be on the meds for the week after this as well as far as I can tell. We can not be to cautious in dealing with it, so the best approach is to go aggressively. Blood test do not really give you the complete story of the appearance of the infection or not. Its best just to just try and wipe it out completely. So, this where I am at now. Just laying low and making sure I can beat this. It will delay my return to work, but I still have a vacation to Colorado to look forward to. Nothing will get in the way of that trip I hope, or I will be hiking with a IV line if I have to.