Read these posts with the usual horrid fascination. And not only do I have a story for you, but I got pics!!! ooooohhhh Never ever give us digital cameras and demerol. You take pics of “interesting” things…
BTW, don’t eat pizza while reading this…or spaghettios, or noodles, or definitely not split pea soup…
This one is a saga:
Oct 2003, I have a small lump on my back about 3 inches below bra strap. Doc says its a cyst and get it removed whenever. It decides to infect. I end up in ER room. Doc jabs repetitively with local anaesthesia then cuts me open. The smell is horrendous but the relief is great. They cut a lil hole about one inch wide and about 3 inches deep right next to my spine to get this thing taken care of. backhole This is it with no stuffin! Then they cram as much gauze into this puppy as they can. This, of course, does not tickle. And looks like this: backstuffed They have to do this to make it heal from the inside out. So you have to get it pulled out and repacked several times. They do NOT give drugs after the second time.
4 Repack Visits later to the ER room, I am given the go ahead to do a final follow up with a surgeon. They’re guessing this is where what happened next started. Surgeon took look at it and said it was healing good and to let it close. No problem, YAY! About 4 days later, I have a small, very painful lump in my left arm pit. I think it might be pimple or hair or something…but its deep and hurts intensely. It’s only pencil eraser sized. This is Wed. By Friday, its quarter sized and I can’t even move the arm without wanting to cry. Find a different surgeon (one closer to my house) and get emergency appt. They try to needle aspirate.
For those of you who have not had the fantastic offer of needle aspiration on an already very painful lump…RUN if offered. Do not let them do this unless the first needle they stick in you has something like oh…demerol…morphine…a liquid sledgehammer. The nerves are already ticked off, and now you’re going to repetitively stab it with a needle…and whose bright idea was this??? I digress…
So surgeon needle aspirates and gets NOTHING except me whimpering. He puts me on antibiotics and gives me 20 demerol to go home with. Says he needs to see me or call him first thing next week and tell him the status if it is getting better or worse. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA He warns me it will get bigger and more painful before the antibiotics kick in and start helping. I take him for his word…(I’m a very literal kind of gal and will do anything to avoid the ER)
So on Friday my quarter sized lump is hurting, has new holes poked in it from aspiration and is, in general, very pissed off at me. I take my happy little demerols…they really are quite nifty. And I ignore the fact that by Saturday it is growing faster. How fast, you say? Well let’s do a little comparison. Here’s my good arm: goodarm and here is my bad arm on Saturday badarm Notice the arm is starting to swell.
Well…the doc did say it was going to hurt worse and it was going to get worse…technically this was worse. lol So I went to a party that weekend, demerol makes parties fun. Sunday I was not feeling so good. No, I did not ingest anything but coke as liquids. I was just getting that sick. By Monday, this thing was going ballistic and I was thinking I might be in trouble…but hey…the doc was going to be in on Tuesday. Mine as well wait till then…right?
So Tuesday comes and my arm TuesdayBad is really starting to look sickly. Blood vessels showing funny, horrible swelling, I’m running fevers. And of course, I measured it. It’s about 4X2X1 and hangs off my arm. I call surgeon and get an immediate appt. Call in dead to work (they were not aware of what was going on, they just thought I had a sore arm). I go to Surgeon. He takes one look and says I need to go to hospital and get IV’s. I say no…I need him to cut this open and fix it. He and I “discuss” this. I win. I like him 
I didn’t like him a couple minutes later. I get shot up, they cut it open and it was like watching the pus version of Old Faithful erupt. I swear it looked and smelled like rotten split pea soup. Doc says it was a staph infection (later testing proved it to be an MRSA-methicillin resistant staph aureus infection - ironic isn’t it with my nickname?)
They pack it to force it to stay open. Send me home to come back next day to repack. Surgeon and I compromised that if it wasn’t better in 3 days with noticeable improvement I admitted myself to hospital. So Wednesday, I go to surgeon’s office and the nurse “preps” me. Part of prepping is to remove the bandage covering the wound. When we do this, the gauze crammed in the hole stuck to it. It came out. Now I’m sitting upright, and all of a sudden there is a great release of pressure under my arm, its gross, smells and the nurse throws a drop cloth under me, shoves me back in a laying position and leaves the room at a run. This inspires confidence. In the meantime, I am fascinated by the power of this infection. Staph infections are MASSIVE producers of pus. And this thing is practically spurting every time I inhaled. It was nifty yet…gross. So I start pushing on the outer edges of it forcing it to expel it all out. This was the same thing the doctor had done the day before. In the meantime, the nurse comes back with another nurse in tow. She takes one look and leaves the room. Next the receptionist comes in and takes a peek. Leaves the room muttering “revolting” under her breath (did I mention this didn’t affect my hearing at all??) Finally the surgeon comes in. He watches me doing my little push job and asks me if I’m having fun. I said “sure, who knew the body could do this??” He said that I was “a unique patient”. I think it was supposed to be a compliment. blank look
So my arm now is massively swollen, has a hole cut into it and is mass producing pus. WedGross It’s soooo pretty. Work is pitching a fit. So I took my supervisor into the bathroom and asked her to “help me” change the bandage. Did you know that watching your supervisor gag can be a very fulfilling exercise? Especially when they swallow hard repetitively and do that close the eyes, take a deep breath thing. What’s even better is taking a deep breath near a stinky smelly infection makes them toss their cookies.
And, of course I have a bad reaction to the tape we used to put the gauze on me, so the skin started blistering from that. I got a mild case of cellulitis in the arm from all the fluid buildup. It was just not a good thing.
So…to make this saga a little shorter. The arm healed nicely and quickly. LotsBetter At this point I had been on 20 days of antibiotics. Went off them and within 3 days had 9 more cysts combined in my arm pits. None of those ever got to the surface (they were always just lumps). Ended up on antibiotics for 65 days and one more cyst on my back. This one required some at-home surgery evil grin. I’m a fair skinned redhead…we do NOT deal well with antibiotics and I actually had no problem taking all of them. However, in the past month due to another issue, have discovered that I am now allergic to one of the antibiotics they used- Cipro. When I had taken it for 10 of those 65 days it caused no problems.
hmmm I’m kinda craving split pea soup for some odd reason…
Aureos
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