Week Full of Foot Trouble

Adrian has an old surgical textbook from the 1920s with terrible pictures of people with rectal and anal problems: fissures, hemorrhoids, etc. He calls it his "Bookful of Butt Trouble".

I've had a week full of foot trouble. At work Monday, I noticed a sharp pain in my left ankle. When I got home that evening, there was a lot of swelling around my ankle bone and some redness. I figured something had bitten me, so I put some ice on it. There wasn't any pain so I wasn't worried.

By Wednesday, there were red streaks radiating up my leg from my ankle bone, which was swollen so much I couldn't put a sock on it. The pain was so bad by Thursday, I called my doctor and went in for a visit. He said it looked like an infection, but he wanted to do blood work in case it might be a blood clot. His nurse couldn't get any blood out of me after sticking me 4 times, so I went to a lab, where I got stuck (this time successfully) for the 5th time that day. Doctor said he would call me if the lab results indicated a possible blood clot. Doc asked me to draw a line around the border of the redness with a Sharpie, so he could see if it had gotten better or worse when I came in for a follow up today. He gave me a scrip for some antibiotics and a note for work and I limped out the door.

I went home, drew on my leg with the Sharpie and fell asleep on the couch. The phone woke me up at 4:30. It was the doctor, telling me to "go to the emergency room immediately." I said I would wait for my husband to get home from work in 30 minutes and Doc said "don't wait on him. Call him and tell him where you'll be". Oh great! I've got a blood clot and I might stroke out at any minute???

I called Adrian and asked him to come home immediately, which he did. We went to the emergency room at the Heart Hospital at Austin, which is the place to go if you don't want to wait. We were the only ones there, so they put me in a room right away. A doctor came in and looked at me and said "that's cellulitis", then walked out. What the fuck is cellulitis??? Why do I get stuff that I've never heard of?? Another doctor came in later and explained that it looked like a bug bite had caused an infection of the inner lining of my skin on part of my foot and it was a good thing that I came in, because it was starting to go up my leg. She said she wanted to do an ultrasound to rule out blood clots, so the ultrasound person was called. She came in and I spent 30 minutes having an ultrasound wand ground into my groin and down my leg while I tried not to scream. She couldn't get anywhere near my calf because it was too painful, but she determined that I was clot-free. YAY!

The doc gave me ANOTHER scrip for another antibiotic because "we've had a problem with MRSA going around". MRSA is a deadly staph bacteria that is drug resistant, and she thought that 2 antibiotics would surely knock the cellulitis out. She also told me that people with autoimmune disease usually have problems with cellulitis (Tracy???).

My foot looks better today but it still hurts like shit. I also still have a black ink line snaking up my leg for the doctor to peruse this afternoon. It reminds me of when I first got my tattoo and people would ask me "did you draw that on your wrist?" At the time, I would answer, "Yes, I'm 30 years old and all I do is sit around and draw on myself". Well, now I'm almost 42 and I really do draw on myself. I should have gotten Adrian to do it, it would have looked better.