< Bong! Bong! Bong! > Please get back in bed! Your care team has been notified!
I wasn’t even trying to get out - just shifted myself enough to set off the alarm last week. The most ridiculous thing was that the alarm kept going off until a nurse came in to stop it.
This is too cheap a shot to respond to, especially the lazy and self-interested part. Lazy and self-interested people do not become, much less continue to be nurses and nursing assistants. I will risk a ‘full stop’ here.
The phlebitis (or maybe cellulitis, names given to it by different doctors, though the symptoms look the same to me) is still hanging around. From knee to groin a large patch of skin was bright red, swollen, stretched, and painful, with several two-inch lumps that looked like an alien’s egg pod was about to hatch. For obvious reasons, this interfered with all the walking and exercises they want me to do to bring my strength back.
It wasn’t until the second course of antibiotics that the pain subsided, leaving my leg looking like it was peeling from a bad case of sunburn from the overstretched skin.
I had the operation a month ago today, and while I’m much improved since even the second time I went home, today’s the first day I truly feel like I’m starting my recovery without handicaps. So, good news at last.
You might have had both at the same time. The only difference is where the -itis (inflammation in tissue) is. In phlebitis the inflammation is in a vein. In cellulitis the inflammation is in subcutaneous (below the skin) connective tissue, Red, swollen, warm, painful.