oh my, we are all so sick.
more broomstick, more!
Broomstick what was the origin of this? An insect bite? Why didn’t they just irrigate and remove the source of the infection instead of letting you suffer with this oozing wound.
It wouldn’t be so interesting…
the saga continues…
But first, to answer Astro’s questions - we were never able to determine what, exactly, this started as. They did remove the “source of infection”, or at least a small chunk of jaw muscle (remember, when I say “crater” I’m not kidding - it really was over an inch long, half an inch wide, and 3/8 inch deep). Mainly because that small chunck of tissue had actually died (that’s what the black scab actually was - dead tissue.) This had all blown up literally overnight and the doctors were more interested in draining and controlling the infection than back-tracking to it’s original source. I was told at the time that there would be a significant scar, but that a second operation could be done later, after full healing (6-12 months) to make that scar less obvious.
The lab results said it was a strain of staphlococcus aurens resistant to several antibiotics, which is a very virulent bacteria that can be life-threatening and does, in fact, kill people every year. I was on 1,500 mg of Augmentin a day for a month. Amazingly enough, I did not puke or have diarrhea, both very common side effects of that antiobiotic. The docs said that if I had waited 12 more hours (maybe even less) they would have had to admit to the hospital and pump antibiotics in by IV (hence my doubt they would have delayed surgery even if I had turned up pregnant). In addition to that, we were shoveling silvadine cream into the wound - I believe they use that on burn patients and others with open wounds. Aside from retarding bacterial growth, it also stopped scab formation. That kind of wound has to heal from the bottom up - if skin forms over the infection and seals it in you just get another abcess and go through this all over again. That was what some of this thrice-daily cleaning was all about, too - preventing scab formation. That’s why the wound wasn’t stitched.
Oh yes, cleaning - this was not your garden variety pus. I called it the “condiment effect”. You know when you put too much ketchup and mustard on something, how it can ooze out of the bun? That was my face - looked like mustard and mayonaise, with some ketchup and the occassional chunk of green relish. The first week was the worst, but it continued to ooze for weeks as it drained and healed.
Well, at first I was going back to the surgeon every week for follow-up care (needless to say, if things had stopped getting better they would have had my butt in a hospital bed in no time), then every other week. Twice he had to do debridement. You see, there was still so much nastiness in that wound that a couple of small spots of tissue had died and those had to be removed since rotting flesh in a wound is just not good. So he took a scalpel and scraped at this dead spot in a raw, open wound until all the dead tissue was gone and the spot was oozing fresh blood. Gross, n’est-ce pas? Didn’t feel too good, either. Those were just the stubborn dead chunks. While doing the water-squirting thing at home we did occassionaly dislodge small shreds of tissue. Some were green relish chunks and some looked like a fragment of tomato skin. Icky.
Anyhow, on one of these visits to the doctor, about 5 weeks along, he asked if I minded having a new medical student do a medical history with me. I said sure, why not? It’s just questions, right?
Now, remember, I’m feeling better. I’ve been going to work. I’m dressed in a dress (for once), hose, my hair done up a comb and some fancy hairsticks, nice shoes, etc. This young guy comes in, the medical student, and he sees this nice, elegant looking professional woman who is probably old enough to be his mother sitting there. He’s nervous, because he’s new at all this, but very earnestly he starts in on the questions - age, onset of problem, etc., etc.
Then he says “Have you looked at the wound?”
“Yes, I have.”
“How would you describe it?”
“Well, it looks like raw meat.”
He sort of blinks at this and mentions that’s an unusual way to describe something like that. I say yes, I’d have to agree, but I’m a very honest and direct person. And, anyhow, it looks a heck of a lot better than it did just after surgery.
“Oh. And how would you describe how it looked just after surgery?”
“Like putrefying raw meat” in a soft voice with a smile, like we were discussing the weather.
That’s when the medical student jumped up, knocking his chair over, and ran from the room.
The doctor came in, asked me what I had done to the poor medical student, who was apparently urpsing his guts up in the next exam room. I told him I had answered the young man’s questions - and which question and what answer.
The surgeon sort of laughed grimly at that and said “Well, yes, it did look that way, but most people don’t say it that bluntly. You know, he’s never actually seen an infection like that. I better go see how he’s doing, he’s going to have to learn to deal with this sort of thing.” So he went and took care of the medical student before coming back to take care of me.
[yes, there’s more - but not much more]
More! More!
As an occasional lurker and infrequent poster I am thrilled, delighted and horrified that other people are as fascinated by pimples, abcesses, etc as I am.
I have a few stories, (being a nurse) but none are nearly as weird and wonderful as Broomstick’s. Let me know if anyone wants them.
Juliefoolie, of course we want them.
It took me a while to decide to read this thread. And I can’t believe I’ve been as fascinated by it. But heck, bring some more on.
The categories are
Skin Pits
Stupid Doctor Tricks (actually this could be a whole new thread!)
Sebaceous Cysts
Emerging Foreign Bodies
Wound Dehiscence
Just Plain Weird
Oh and my apologies in advance to those who be squemish.
(Old joke from student days…
Q…Whats the difference between a bunch of nursing students and a toxic waste dump?
A…You can sit and eat your lunch next to a toxic waste dump)
(Business students found this hilarious!)
Oooh, oooh, oooh, this one!!!
Start a new thread! Wheeeee!
AAAAHHHHH!!! OH. MY. GOD!!!
I was eating a deviled egg when I opened that page and it was so disgusting I spit the egg out and that reminded me of some massive pimple-cyst and that made me end up on my bedroom floor retching in to a trashcan oh my god why oh dear god nooooo!!!
I love you guys. 
LC
Great. Now I have to go to work, and Im thinking about all the wonderful skin anomalies I can prod and poke at. Except Im sure Mrs. B’s daughter would not be impressed if I “expressed the contents” of her mom’s sebaceous cyst right before she picked her up for Easter dinner.
(No they didnt teach that in nursing school, its something you just kind of know)
Ooh, I can contribute to this thread!!
A few years ago, I seemed to have a rash of behind-the-ear pimples that would come and go. I guess I have a lot of dandruff and other thingies that would block progress so to speak. Anyhoo, I hadn’t felt behind my ear for a few months, so one day at work, I absentmindedly scratched behind my ear and I felt (and heard) a wet splorch behind my ear. I pressed ever so gently and this time the sound was louder and I felt ickiness dripping down my neck. It stopped after a few seconds and I wiped it off with a baby wipe from a pack I keep in my desk. Just then, something came up work-related so I had to stop and pay attention. Please bear in mind that I have thick hair and it was about shoulder length at the time. This will be important.
I held off from examining my “ear volcano” at work (even though it occupied my every thought), because I knew I could manipulate it at will when I got home. The minute my door closed behind me, I kicked off my shoes and got down to business. I found that I couldn’t get to my ear because the pus and other contents had dried in my hair. I spent about 20 anxious minutes scraping and combing crud out of the area before I could get down to some serious squeezing.
Let this be a lesson to all of you!! Remember to wash behind your ears so that you are never faced with a potentially embarrassing situation like this again!! Then again, if you like this sort of thing, just let the pile grow undisturbed and you might be rewarded with your very own “EAR VOLCANO” too!!!
Seriously, I’m glad that none of my co-workers noticed my disgusting predicament. I’m not so far gone that I wanted anyone to have concrete proof of how gross I am.
Can one nominate a thread for threadspotting prior to the star poster submitting her final post?
{And the crowd chants: Broom-stick! Broom-stick! Broom-stick!}
Well, as if having the Zit From Hell, emergency surgery, thrice-daily wound care, AND going to work every day wasn’t enough…
Halfway through the healing period our lease was up on our apartment. The landlord lady announced our rent would double. We basically said something printable only in the BBQ Pit. She said we had no choice - there were only two weeks left on the lease and “you won’t be moving with your wife so sick and all”. And even if we did find another place, she said she’d give us a bad reference. So we had no choice, we would have to sign. Because, as she said, “If you can afford to fly airplanes you’ve been holding out on us and should have been paying more rent all along” (Yes, some people actually think that way - that they’re somehow entitled to YOUR money)
We told her where to stuff it. But - ha! ha! - I’m not supposed to be exposed to dust or dirt until I’m fully healed, we’ve got an apartment full of junk, two weeks to move, and (after doctor bills) not enough money to pay someone else to do the job.
This is why friends are so important.
Yes, our friends did pitch in. Even so, my husband would plaster multiple layers of gauze over my face. After a day of sorting, packing, tossing, and loading a friend’s pick up (this is before we bought a truck of our own) I’d be covered in dirt smudges. Then we’d spend 20 minutes scrubbing before peeling off the bandages, cleaning the nasty goo out of my face, reapplying medicines, rebandaging, and going back to working.
I was supposed to be resting. Right. I was going on 5 hours of sleep a night. I’d wake up, get my face scoured, go to work, come home, get my face scoured, work on moving, get my face scoured, drop off to sleep, and do it again.
But we did it - moved us from Rogers Park, Chicago to northwest Indiana in two weeks. The first weekend in the new place I think I slept 14 hours on both days. The only good thing was the wound wasn’t oozing Miracle Whip any more but much more normal blood and clear fluids.
The other problem, of course, was that in the course of moving the husband and I both acquired many cuts and scrapes, particularly on our hands. This made cleaning the wound even harder, because we had to treat all the nasty crap coming out of me as infectious. We used a lot of latex gloves.
One of our new next door neighbors was a young tough who though he was hot stuff and…ah… did not have a high opinion of women, viewing them largely as whores and housewives. Well, the new landlord filled his head with a story about how the husband and I had fled Chicago due to legal problems involving the fate of a young tough who had attempted to rape me at knifepoint (hence, the heavy bandages on my face) and uh… what happened to the young man? Well, he was in the graveyard. The young tough next door didn’t believe a word of it.
Until the bandages came off.
Because, you see, a scalpel is a knife, and I clearly had a slash across my face…
Funny, that young jerk next door was real polite to me after that.
How bad was the scar? Well…
The last time I went to the surgeon the doc-in-training who had assisted at the surgery was there, too. The surgeon had me sit so when the other doc came in he saw my good side. Said “remember her?” Oh, yeah, he did. Then the surgeon had me turn my head, and the other guy went “wow!”. Because the wound had healed not into some gargantuan crater but a thin red line. The surgeon said the scars don’t usually look that good even after he “revises them”.
It was bright red for about six months, then faded. Nowadays, a lot of people miss it unless the light hits my jawline just right.
Well, after all that fuss and bluster I don’t even have an interesting scar! How did that happen?
Couple of factors here -
-
I heal well. I always have. I have exactly two scars on my body. One is from a smallpox vaccination. The other… well, look what I had to go through to get it! All the other gashes, scrapes, frostbite, and road rash healed up without a trace.
-
Excellent wound care. Whether I wanted it or not. The husband was most fanatical about this (bless him!). Mind you, I go to the point I’d start crying before he used the water squirter. That hurt. I can’t help myself, I whine, whimper, and snivel when I’m in pain.
-
Good diet. Doc also suggested multivitamin on top of good diet (yes, he did inquire about my eating habits), to help the healing body.
-
The initial surgery was done by a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. These guys know how to slice the skin so scarring is minimized - when they can they follow the “grain” of the skin, cut so normal movements are less likely to pull on the wound, and so forth. As I age, this thin scar will probably fold into one or another wrinkle. (oh joy!)
Well, that’s the story of the Abcess from the Abyss, hope you enjoyed hearing it more than I enjoyed experiencing it.
jumps up from seat applauding with wild abandon
My god, Broomstick, you should receive some sort of award for that… Your story has kept me coming back to this page over and over again these past few days (and left me squeamish every time).
I showed this thread to a friend, who had to go lie down for a while. Psh. Some people have no tolerance for things nasty.
I can’t believe it’s finally over.
Broomstick, I lie prostrate at your feet.
I finally found Airman’s classic The Back of My Ear Just Exploded thread.
My God Almighty. Broomstick, you should submit your case history to a medical journal.
Broomstick, I humbly step aside and hail your absolute right to reign over us with your saga. It will be told and re-told millennia from now, when the next ice age hits, as a tribute to bravery, perseverance and good wound care.
P.S. I hope you cooked your husband his favorite dinner as a reward. I once had to assist a member of my immediate family in this way, and while I did what had to be done, there’s not enough therapy in the world to eliminate my shuddering when I recall the circumstances.
Thank you Broomstick for a fabulous story, told simply superbly (did you initally plan to tell it in instalments or did that just happen?)
I am pleased to hear your wound left you with minimal scarring. You sound not only blessed with good genes (as evidenced by lack of other scars) but also a patient and scrupulous ‘nurse’ who must love you very very much. Plus all the other positives you mentioned.
I don’t have any stories of even vaguely comparable ickery, although I did once have a large sebaceous cyst removed from behind my ear (which has now come back - the cyst, not my ear!). I hesitate to go through the procedure again to have it removed - not so much for the discomfort etc, but the sound of the scalpel scraping away at the contents (at least I think that was what the noise was) - I had just a local anaesthetic and the procedure was done in the doctor’s rooms. But there is this large lump under the skin, which I can just catch sight of in the mirror and I feel most self-conscious about it when I have my hair cut. In fact it was my hairdresser back then who first commented on it and suggested I get it seen to. But I’m chicken.