NSFE Got some sort of funky leg infection going....

[SC Tiger]

....So I wake up one morning with this strange boil on my leg.  I don't think too much of it but it keeps getting bigger.  Finally the Saturday before Christmas it gets to where I can't sleep because I can't have it touching anything.

Being stubborn, I don't do anything until Monday (Christmas Eve).  I tried to call my family doctor but they were closed.  This is my third round with this so I want to go to my family doctor.  So I wait.  

Tuesday - I try to pop it with a "sterilized" safety pin.  That......didn't work.  Some bad stuff came out but not nearly enough, and it was too inflamed for me to stand doing much more.  

Finally on Wednesday I call the doc at 8:15.  Said they can see me at 8:45.  I haul ass.

Doc sees it and says we gotta open that up.  Fun.  Did I mention it was inflamed and even touching it made me want to hit the ceiling?  While getting myself ready I notice that my entire lower leg is swollen.

They try to numb it and open it up.  YEEEOUUUUUCHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Holy CRAP!!!!!!!!!  

Then they see bad stuff and have to squeeze it out.  That made the first pain seem like a massage.  

Finally, there's "this last little bit" they need to get out.  He squeezes. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!!!!  Speaking of God, I think I saw him.  He said something about I shouldn't have waited so long to see the doctor.

Afterwards - my ears were actually ringing and I was feeling light-headed from the pain.  This doc has a serious set of meathooks and he put the clamps on this thing to drain it.

This is about what I sounded like while he was working on me:

I wound up staying in the room for about 20 minutes gathering myself.  But felt immediately better.  They then stuffed some sort of sterile cotton stuff in it to hold it open so it can drain and all the infection can get out, and so it will heal from the inside out.  I have to go every few days so they can change out the stuff in there.  Two days after all of this the wound was about an inch deep and about a half inch diameter or so.

5 days of antibiotics and I have to rub some kind of stuff in my nose 3x a day to kill what we think is the root cause of this.

Had I waited much longer, I possibly could have been able to go halfsies with Alchemy on a pair of shoes.  This thing was pretty serious, as it turns out.

 

Next time - I ain't waiting so damn long.

[gwalchmai]

Hope it gets better soon, SC!

[tadbart]

Not laughing AT you, but that's a great description.

Mupirocin in the nose for a MRSA colonization?

 

Don't freak out. Most everybody has it. Sometimes it just gets outta hand.

Heal up quick.

[willie-pete]

16 minutes ago, tadbart said:

Not laughing AT you, but that's a great description.

Mupirocin in the nose for a MRSA colonization?

 

Don't freak out. Most everybody has it. Sometimes it just gets outta hand.

Heal up quick.

[tadbart]

10 minutes ago, willie-pete said:

Staphylococcus aureus, "The golden bug" is pretty much on everyone's skin. It thrives everywhere, and is hardy to the same environment that we are. In my microbiology class, we went around and swabbed whatever we wanted- every orifice was represented in my class. I swabbed my ER work shoes. Those swabs were then placed on petri dishes and allowed to culture.

S. aureus was on almost every dish.

[SC Tiger]

36 minutes ago, tadbart said:

Not laughing AT you, but that's a great description.

Mupirocin in the nose for a MRSA colonization?

 

Don't freak out. Most everybody has it. Sometimes it just gets outta hand.

Heal up quick.

We're treating it as MRSA for now.  No idea if that's what it is since they couldn't do a proper culture.  Basically that's a worst case, and since it's effectively harmless if this ISN'T MRSA, that's the plan.

Biggest issue is after I rub the stuff in my nose I look like I need to wipe my nose for a while.

17 minutes ago, willie-pete said:

Actually MRSA is basically Staph on steroids.  And Staph is very prevalent.  The problem is when it gets into an opening in the skin.  

MRSA is a nightmare for hospitals.  If I knew someone in hospital right now, no way in hell would I visit them until I'm rid of this crap.

Edited January 2, 2019 by SC Tiger

[SC Tiger]

4 minutes ago, tadbart said:

Staphylococcus aureus, "The golden bug" is pretty much on everyone's skin. It thrives everywhere, and is hardy to the same environment that we are. In my microbiology class, we went around and swabbed whatever we wanted- every orifice was represented in my class. I swabbed my ER work shoes. Those swabs were then placed on petri dishes and allowed to culture.

S. aureus was on almost every dish.

EVERY orifice? 

There was an urban legend at Clemson about a girl who swabbed the inside of her cheek looking for skin cells, but actually found sperm cells.......

 

BTW - what do they call it when they stuff bandaging inside a wound (sterile bandages) to hold it open so that it can drain and heal from the inside out?  I think there's a name for it but I can't remember what it is.

Edited January 2, 2019 by SC Tiger

[tadbart]

Just now, SC Tiger said:

EVERY orifice? 

There was an urban legend at Clemson about a girl who swabbed the inside of her cheek looking for skin cells, but actually found sperm cells.......

yup. it was an uh, adventurous class. found some budding yeast, E. coli, and Pseudomonas. no coffee-bean shaped diplococci of love, though.

[Bish1309]

I had a cyst burst once. It was terrible. I had to actually replace the 10 feet of mini gauze that kept getting stuffed in the lanced opening to help it heal. 6 times I had to do that over the course of a few weeks. Took about 6 months to heal over. It was on the back of my leg so sitting was a chore every day.

 

Soon enough yours should be back to normal. Good luck with the healing and may it be quick and complete.

Edited January 2, 2019 by Bish1309

[tadbart]

@SC Tiger Incision and Drainage with packing. I+D for short. sorry I didn't see that part earlier. Healing by secondary intention.

[JimBianchi]

Wow, that sucks.

Do what the doc says, take your meds!

 

I got bit on my upper thigh near the groin, by some kind of spider or bug in Greece in 1990.  Woke up with an itchy red mark and what looked like a pimple or hair follicle with a bite mark in the center.  I ignored it of course.  A week later it was four inches long bruise that was squishy and travelling down my leg.  I circled it with a sharpie to see if it was still growing.  It didn't really hurt so I ignored it a few more days. Figured it was an ingrown hair that got out of control so of course I picked at it with a sterile blade but nothing came out.

Then it was painful, redder and larger so I told the base medic (the site was too small for a real doctor), he said it was bite for sure and that there were dozens of unknown spiders around Greece. He said it was infected and he gave me antibiotics and a steroid shot and circled it again to watch for growth. (and to stop picking at it!)

A week later it stunk and i was limping from the pain, felt like it was eating my leg muscle.  So I was going to be sent to the nearest US military hospital, Aviono, Italy.  As we were remote tour in Greece, scheduling that urgent-but-not-an-emergency trip is a pain and the delay gave a few days of reprieve while they figure how to get me there.  But by then the swelling went down slightly and I avoided the trip.  Eventually (months!) it went away.   Saw a real doctor many weeks later and he agreed it was a poisonous bite that got infected,  If it kept up, surgery would have cut the poison out, and few pounds of leg muscle with it, or worse.

One of the jobs of our medic had was to catalog unknown insects and spiders.  Were were in the of nowhere in Greece, farm central, no one had ever cataloged the insects here as far as we knew, He showed me several bags of frozen bugs (and a very cool snake) in his freezer in the med-aid station. The few dozen he'd collected in two years.  He said most were probably unknown.  It seemed to me it was the part of the job he loved the most!

[Bish1309]

Sigh, I can't believe no one is asking for pics. Selfies even....anyone.....Bueller? LOL

[willie-pete]

2 hours ago, tadbart said:

Staphylococcus aureus, "The golden bug" is pretty much on everyone's skin. It thrives everywhere, and is hardy to the same environment that we are. In my microbiology class, we went around and swabbed whatever we wanted- every orifice was represented in my class. I swabbed my ER work shoes. Those swabs were then placed on petri dishes and allowed to culture.

S. aureus was on almost every dish.

Thanks; I am going to sleep well tonight.

 

 

NOT !

[NPTim]

4 hours ago, tadbart said:

Not laughing AT you, but that's a great description.

Mupirocin in the nose for a MRSA colonization?

 

Don't freak out. Most everybody has it. Sometimes it just gets outta hand.

Heal up quick.

Yeah, stop picking yer nose ******. 

[jmax]

You could always use the old tried and true method of using maggots?

 

I had a suture in my heel that got infected and it went from a quail egg size to a duck egg size in a few yours, the surgeon opened it up in his office, ghastly smell and it looked like bloody cottage cheese. I later got to go in and have all of the suture material removed along with scar tissue, not a nice thing to deal with. By the way I did not use the old tried and true method. 

Edited January 2, 2019 by jmax

[C_Hallbert]

EVERY orifice? 
There was an urban legend at Clemson about a girl who swabbed the inside of her cheek looking for skin cells, but actually found sperm cells.......
 
BTW - what do they call it when they stuff bandaging inside a wound (sterile bandages) to hold it open so that it can drain and heal from the inside out?  I think there's a name for it but I can't remember what it is.

‘Granulation’


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Huaco Kid]

On a follow-up, after a chest surgery several years ago,  I was told I had a hematoma,  as I was swollen from my armpit to the bottom of my ribcage on one side.  They decided to just keep an eye on it (?).

It erupted "opened" while I was in the shower one day.  More mess than you can imagine.  I'm glad I was in the shower.  I almost passed out and had to sit for a long while.

Immediately went to the surgeon and was told there was a bunch more in there.  I was given the choice of going into surgery (which probably would have been a multi-day stay),  or just "taking it" in an examination room.  I took it.  I passed out again.

Had to have a visiting nurse come daily and clean / repack it for several weeks.  The pain was truly memorable.

[tadbart]

I did a BRIEF stint as a home health nurse when I was an LPN.

Wound care. Horrible. Give me blood and guts and spit and ass in the ER, any day, over a weeping leg wound that Fifi the chihuahua rips the dressing off and licks at night.

Those big tunneling wounds like Huaco is talking about? Sometimes they Saran Wrap the whole thing and apply a constant vacuum to suck the goo out and promote circulation and healing. "Somebody" has to change that dressing and dump that cannister. Faaaack.

[MikeG36]

Dang. That sounds horrible. Glad it wasn't on your .... eh, shall we say a more sensitive part of your anatomy.  

[willie-pete]

OK, I am officially out of this thread.

 

 

( Can you flounce from a thread? )

[tadbart]

@willie-pete after your thread on SAC's demise and how the new guys apologize for "offensive and insensitive" tweets, well, you just don't seem uh, flouncy.

Dude, I seen maggots in wounds. They were probably the only reason the patient was still alive.

[willie-pete]

35 minutes ago, tadbart said:

@willie-pete after your thread on SAC's demise and how the new guys apologize for "offensive and insensitive" tweets, well, you just don't seem uh, flouncy.

Dude, I seen maggots in wounds. They were probably the only reason the patient was still alive.

 

[KBKEITH]

The wife had MRSA 12 years ago. Damn near killed her. She’s lucky to be alive.

[ARP]

I had one of those puss spewing boil type things on the sack last year. Honestly I can not remember all that I did, I recall keeping the site clean with peroxide and treating with triple antibiotic cream. Drained and cleaned and drained. Eventually it scabbed over and healed up. Probably a double infected hair follicle.

[flags]

8 hours ago, tadbart said:

Staphylococcus aureus, "The golden bug" is pretty much on everyone's skin. It thrives everywhere, and is hardy to the same environment that we are. In my microbiology class, we went around and swabbed whatever we wanted- every orifice was represented in my class. I swabbed my ER work shoes. Those swabs were then placed on petri dishes and allowed to culture.

S. aureus was on almost every dish.

This is why I never took chemistry. Ignorance is bliss