Hello :)
I have not used this blog in over ten years! However, I have been going through something that has taken a serious toll on me and my body, and I'd like to share my story.
Now, some of you may know that my health started to rapidly decline when I turned 40! I gradually got sicker and sicker and on Thanksgiving Day 2023, I went into the hospital. I was diagnosed with Pneumonia, Covid and Sepsis.
I was put into the ICU for several days and somehow made a recovery good enough to come home. I would find myself going through Sepsis and Covid again over the holidays and the first part of 2024. It was the hospital visit in late March 2024 that traumatized me and left me with a lifelong injury.
Now, I dont remember many details about all of the hospital stays over the holidays and before the stay in March. It is all so blurry to me and though I do remember being sick as a dog and having to have a PICC line put in more than once, its still blurry.
So, with that being said, lets go back to Mid-March 2024 where I went to the ER at White River Health in Batesville, AR. I felt sick, my leg was hot and red and I was running a fever. I knew I had Sepsis again. Due to a cellulitis infection in my leg that had yet to heal.
Before I was checked in, my husband took a photo of my leg. Here you can see it is hot, red and full of fluid (lymphedema)
After being admitted I received IV antibiotics and within 24 hours, my leg took a turn for the worst. It had developed HUGE disgusting fluid-filled blisters all over the front and back. It was so painful and a complete mess. My leg began draining and blisters would pop from me getting up and down from the hospital bed. The care I was receiving at this time was awful. They did not know what to do or what they had done. There were no explanations for the blisters other than "cellulitis." The pain was awful and it was hellish trying to get them to give me pain meds. I think I got one hydrocodone 10mg. Anyway... here's a pic of the blisters... sorry so graphic, its going to get worse!
Now, fast-forward to being discharged from a shitty doctor experience in the hospital. I was instructed to go to the Wound Clinic one week after being at home. I was not instructed to do anything to my wounds except to "keep my leg elevated." LOL Like that is going to help THIS. I don't think I was given any pain medication to take home or even any cream for my wounds, maybe some antibiotics.
One week later, I go to the Wound Clinic.
The doctor, Craig Pickren, comes in angry. "You're going to lose your leg!" He hatefully states to me as he begins to maniacally debride my leg. Which was absolutely unnecessary, IMO. My leg wounds were so fresh and painful and he comes at me with a blade of some sort scraping off skin and being completely rude to me the whole time.
Here are pics of my leg before I went to the Wound Clinic... one week after my hospital stay, as directed.
THIS is what he was scraping as I cried my heart out. He was being so mean and he was hurting me. They tested my blood sugar, which was high, and that made him even more mad! I could not help it, I was not on any diabetic medication at the time and I was not aware that wounds can raise your sugar levels as well as your A1C.
Finally he says he can't do anymore and instructs the nurse to take me to the back so that I can lay on my stomach and he can debride the back. I am miserable at this point but little did I know that everything was about to get worse!
I lay on the table and he comes in debriding more as I continue to cry. I dont really remember much else except he instructed the nurses to wrap my leg in kerlex that had been soaked in Dakin's solution.
OKAY. So they do that and tell me to take the wrappings off the next day and rewrap it like they did. Kerlex soaked in Dakin's solution with an ACE bandage to hold everything in place. I asked for some sort of numbing cream or ANYTHING to help with the pain. All they called me in was my own bottle of Dakin's solution and a small tube of lidocaine cream, which was pointless.
The next day rolls around and we are ready to unwrap and rewrap my leg. As we begin to take the bandages off, I am finding out that the kerlex that had been soaked in Dakin's solution was stuck to my leg! It had formed like a cast on my raw and blistered leg! We tried everything to get it to soften up and unstick but there was no budging it.
I was too scared to go back to the hospital after my experience with the Wound Clinic and my stay a week prior. I am now at home, in pain and stuck with an unwanted cast on my open-wounded leg. Uncertain of what I would do to take care of this.
The next day we decide to get me to Unity Health Hospital in Searcy, AR. They quickly admitted me and a team was working with me and decided they'd have to RIP IT ALL OFF.
Now, I am already in pain and I have a pretty good tolerance to pain medication. So they end up giving me IV medication.. four of them. Versed, Dilaudid, Morphine and then they break out the big guy.. Ketamine. I was still in terrible pain as the nurses picked pieces of this off, it was going to take forever!
I remember one of the doctors asking me why I was crying, if the nurses were taking too long.. and then he RIPPED it off as fast as he could. My soul left my body. That was some of the worst pain that I have ever had to endure. And I was not even out of the woods yet.. still am not after six months.
Upon ripping the cast/kerlex off, he also took layers of skin. I wish we had a picture of what the skin itsself looked like but we only have leg pictures.. you can see where the skin was taken, though.
I would end up staying at Unity Health for six days. They sent me home with proper supplies to wrap my leg without it sticking and forming a cast. From then one we would be bandaging my leg everyday for a few months. Home Health would be coming in once a week and Physical Therapy twice a week.
I somehow have finished Physical Therapy and my Home Health will be discharging me soon.
I also have a mobile Wound Clinic APRN that checks on me once a week, who is also almost ready to discharge me!
Things look much better now and I am still on the mend. My leg still gets wrapped up each week. But not everyday, like it was from the beginning.
I cannot stand for anything to touch my leg or foot. I also had a split happen in my foot from it staying wet all of the time from the drainage! I forgot to mention the drainage, oh my gosh. I could not even leave the house for weeks on end without leaving a puddle of fluid if it leaked through my bandage. It was humiliation at its finest.
I've had to use a walker, a cane and now I am making due without either one. I am learning to keep my balance and regain my strength to walk on my own again. I am grateful for positivity and healing.
I have reached out to the hospital but have not received a response.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story and understand what has been going on with me the past year.
<3
