Interrupted

My Life Thus Far
2007-05-27 09:07:55 (UTC)

Cellulitis Due To Folliculitis

***

Yet more drama in my life. I can't seem to escape it! At
least this time it's nothing major and nothing emotional.
Just a little bump in the road...or on my leg, in this
case.

So, Friday I woke up with this tiny red bump on my leg.
The lower left side of my shin on the left leg. I thought
it was nothing more than an ingrown hair. I got dressed,
went to work, as usual. No big deal. Well, Kim comes up to
me around 11am and says "oh my goodness, did you get
bitten by a spider"? I look down at my leg and nearly
choked. The little red bump had turned into a half inch in
diameter red lesion on my leg. It hadn't started to hurt
at that point, but over the course of the day it got worse
and worse, until 5:30 when I left and it was almost 3
inches across. A bright red spot with a 2 inch wide pink
border. That hurt like a bitch. It looked horrible and
since all I'd had in the morning when I dressed was a
little red bump, I didn't think anything of wearing a
skirt. Man, was I embarrassed. Kim suggested I have it
looked at. So did pretty much everyone who noticed it. So,
I did. I spent 3 hours sitting in the waiting room of the
ER for them to tell me I had cellulitis due to
folliculitis (an ingrown hair). Basically it's a staph or
strep infection of the underlying skin tissue. The outside
layer of my skin is fine, but the tissue underneath is
infected. It hurts like nothing else, let me tell you. I
didn't get home from the hospital until early this morning
and I was exhausted, so that's why I didn't write.

Today when I got up, I thought it was looking better. It's
hard to tell by the dim light in my bedroom, but it seemed
less swollen (I later found out it was because I hadn't
been on it in 9 hours). Gen, the girls, Sam and I got
together for coffee this afternoon and I noticed when I
showed it to them that it had doubled in size. The doctor
last night drew a pen mark around the perimeter of the
infection and said that if it got worse to come back. I
didn't want to, but since it was a good 3 inches outside
the pen border, Gen and Sam insisted. Such good friends. I
was just going to come home and take my antibiotics as
instructed.

At the ER, instead of spending the hours upon hours
sitting in the waiting room, they took me right in. I
didn't understand the severity of the situation. I mean,
it's just a little pinkness, right? Well, they took it
more seriously and put me in ICU, which I didn't think was
necessary. At first they talked about cutting it open to
drain it and put me on IV antibiotics, but when the doctor
came in to look at it, he decided it wasn't that serious
and put me on a different antibiotic. The first one the
infection was resistant to. Hopefully this new one works,
because if not, I have to go back and who knows what will
happen then.

So that's my drama. An infection. On my leg. I have cute
legs, I don't want to look like a leper! This had better
go away fast. I'm doing what the doctor said. Taking my
meds, keeping it elevated (well, except for right now) and
keeping the heating pad on it. Thank god he gave me some
codeine. The pain is almost completely gone. I feel so
much better. Now, I need to get some sleep. Hopefully, it
will only get better from now on. Not worse! Ciao.




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