Just venting

[Bret4207]

So a couple weeks back I get this rash on my leg. Poison ivy I thinks. By the end of the week, after a gallon or 2 of calamine lotion and numerous home remedies it's obviously not poison ivy. By last Saturday afternoon I'm thinking radioactive waste got me or something. Legs swelled up to the point I can't move with out feeling like it's gonna split open, etc. Allmost went to the ER. Finally get to the dermatologist Mon and he says allergic reaction to unknown substance compounded by a real good infection. Wunnerful. Took the meds and by yesterday afternoon I'm doing great, swelling is dropping. Last night I sit down to surf the web and in 15 minutes my ankle is LOCKED solid! Talk about painful. Didn't sleep a wink last night. Wake up today and it's bad enough my wife wants to stay home and take care of me. Nixed that and ate half a bottle of every fever/inflammation reducer I could find. It's better now, but man! I'm loopy and thae stupid foot HURTS. Of course I have 8 gazillion things to do by yesterday and they just aren't getting done.

I'm officially sick of being sick. There, I feel better.

[LUCKYDAWG13]

have a beer and a shot :-D good luck to ya

[Echo]

I made a trip a couple of weeks ago to a reunion. When I left, I had a red rash on my ankle. when I landed in Columbus OH my leg was swollen & red. RON, then next day drove to Wright-Pat for reunion, and first stop was to Base ER. I was afraid it was a blood clot, as I had that problem several years ago in conjunction with some surgery. No, said the Doc, just Cellulitis, a localized infection. This was on Sept 11. He put me on an anti-biotic (1200 mg/day). When I got home I went to my Primary Care dude, who cut it to 900 mg/day. Next week he upped the dose to 1800 mg/day - and the leg is still swollen, and red. Can't get into my loafers. Hardly painful, but ***, Over? On top of that I came down with a cold, first cold I have had in 20 years. I'm gonna go eat worms...

[twotrees]

3 weeks ago Sunday, I was repairing the front gutters, in the rain. Last job was to put the ladder (with stabilizer bar on it), right where it had been before. Of course it was a lot wetter that it was when I started.

The ladder slipped about 2" when I first started to climb, but was then "solid". As soon as I got 12' up it slid down and disengaged the stabilizer bar, spun 90 degrees.

As one of my Friends said I don't hover as well as I use to, and landed, full force on my right heel.

ER Trip, Ortho Dr trip'S and reconstructive surgery 2 weeks ago today. The whole time I have been cast up, and each one has caused pressure in different places. (All of them hurt). Dr. has me on strong pain meds, but I can't go back to work until I get off those completely. Aleve 12 hour take every 4 hours, is what I am trying to ween myself to, right now.

I guess it's true, I'm no longer 10 Ft. tall and bullet proof. (Wonder if being 65 has anything to do with that ?)

Keep the faith Brother, we'll both get through this,

TwoTrees

[timkelley]

Bret, those things will still be there when you heal.

[swheeler]

Bret; sit back, put both feet up and get the sippin' whiskey out. After you've finished the bottle go to bed, your head will hurt so bad tomorrow morning you will forget about the leg and foot.

[MtGun44]

Get well soon.

Done any insecticide spraying lately?

Bill

[Bret4207]

Thanks for putting up with my self pity guys. No insecticides here at all Bill. I dunno what it was, but I recall hearing something "crunch" under that knee about 3 weeks back when I kneeled down on a wagon bed. Doc said that was probably what let the staph in.

Ankle is much better today, maybe I can get something done for a change!

[SharpsShooter]

I truly sympathize with ya on the ankle lock. When the RA flares up in the knees and ankles it ruins most anything you try to do. Heal fast!

SS

[largom]

Bret, I have had the same thing happen to me TWICE. First time I banged my knee on the bedroom door. Wound up in hospitol for 10 days. Doctors did not know what it was just kept giving me stronger antibotics, got really scared when a surgeon came in and examined my leg. Things finally cleared up but my leg had swelled up so bad the skin cracked in several places. Second time was just like yours, I kneeled down on a hay wagon bed, next day swelling started. Doctors don't know what causes it but both times it has come from my knee.

Get well soon!

Larry

[DCM]

Bret elevate your leg when sitting down it will help to reduce the "pooling"effect.
I have done some bad things to my legs over the years and that is one of the things I learned besides "don't do that".

[EDK]

Three weeks ago I got a rash on my chest, arm pit, arm and back...a band about four inches wide on the body and shoulder to elbow underneath. The EMT at work said it looked like staph, so I called the lady doctor I use. (Bob Seeger described her as "a black haired beauty with big dark eyes and.....she's h*** on a 62 year old guy.) She took a look and said SHINGLES!!! I spent a week on three times a day anti-virals...off on paid sick leave from work...and have been back to work for two weeks now. The whatevers are healed up, but the d*** thing hurts worse now, kinda like a sun burn.

Worst part was the medicine made me sleepy and no alcohol including my occasional shot of AMERICAN HONEY or IRISH MIST. I did get in a little casting and work on the 1000 once fired 44 empties I bought off gunbroker.

Hang in guys, this too will pass.

:Fire::cbpour::redneck:

[MtGun44]

I cut my thumb while cutting an apple I was eating. Hadn't washed the apple. This was at
noon. I woke up at our cabin in Colorado mtns at 2:30 am with my right thumb throbbing.
We headed home at 8:30am, stopped at a small hospital and got an antibiotic shot in the arm
and oral antibiotics - I relaxed. At home the next day it was worse, swelling bad, getting scary now.
Went to my doc, different antibiotics, worse again the next day, now I am really worried, I'm right
handed. Third different kind of antibiotic on day 4 and by day 5 it was not getting worse,
day 6 it was noticably better, steadily improved. No long term effects but it really scared the
hell out of me.

These antibiotic resistant bacteria are very scary. This stuff used to kill people all the time. They
"got sick and died a couple days later."

Best of luck, hope that leg gets all sorted out and SOON.

Bill

[WILCO]

Hang tough Bret. Keep us informed as to how you're doing.

[45nut]

Ankle is much better today, maybe I can get something done for a change!

good news there, hope the rest of the group here heals up too!

Prayers out and more requested for these folks and the ones suffering in silence too.

[Wayne Smith]

There was a day when the only effective treatment of an infection was to cut back to healthy flesh. We need to think about that because we have become extremely casual (I am too) about small cuts. More attention to washing and keeping clean will go a long way.

[Bret4207]

Wow, Bill that sounds bad! I used to teach infectious diseases courses on the job and even back then in the early 90's we were aware of the problems Multiple Drug Resistant bacteria and whatnot caused. Everyone was scared to death of HIV but staph could do you in a lot quicker. Bad stuff if you get the wrong strain.

Something that always laid in the back of my mind was the picture of some illegal veggie picker with MDR plague of some kind hacking a loogy onto a head of lettuce or some beans or something and combining with some of the insecticides and herbicides somehow (don't know that it can really happen) into some super bug. Washing your foods with a soap and at least warm water is a good idea, or peeling it. I really scrub my baking potatoes down good and the same for my salt potatoes (Gosh I love salt potatoes!). The greens are the ones that worry me. We steam stuff but that doesn't kill the baddies and I detest most boiled veggies. Kind of hard choice to make sometimes.

FWIW, the itching is all but gone, the skin is flaking off in big sheets and the swelling is confined to that ankle. It looks like the Michelin Mans ankle!:holysheepI've had my foot elevated so much the Ft Drum is considering marking it with aviation hazard lights and Verizon wants to put a cell receiver on it! :bigsmyl2:At least I can walk without looking like I'm doing my Chester Good imitation.

[Bret4207]

There was a day when the only effective treatment of an infection was to cut back to healthy flesh. We need to think about that because we have become extremely casual (I am too) about small cuts. More attention to washing and keeping clean will go a long way.

Funny you should mention that Wayner, I just read an article about a farmer who raises MAGGOTS for the veterinary biz. Seems certain maggots not only feed nicely on decaying flesh, but the exude a natural and very, very effective antibiotic serum as they eat. The people docs are looking into it too.

I can see it now, "So how many head are you running on the farm these days Bret?" "Oh, about 600 million....."

[725]

Gout? It sucks. Good luck.

[firefly1957]

I sure hope you guys all recover it would be boring hear without you.

Bret I think it was 60 minutes back in the 80's that had a film of a Mexican urinating on strawberries and when they asked him why he said "they go to greengo's who cares". After that congress passed a law that did not allow our schools to give fresh strawberries to our children, Whern they had all the hepatitis outbreaks in school kids some of it was traced right back to Mexican strawberries but because they were frozen (maybe they never really looked into that properly) they could use them in our schools!:holysheep

[rbertalotto]

I was going to add something about the foolishness of self medicating with "half bottles" of anti inflamitories.............And how something like this can turn into a lost foot or leg.........and how about what happens if this is or develops into a blood clot and it rushes to your heart..........and how you should get your *** to a good doctor in a good hospital...........But we all know all this, so I won't preach.......

:lol:

[Blacksmith]

Its called "maggot debridement" and I first heard about it in prisioner of war camps. I also remember a story about a mountain man who survived bad wounds by rolling in maggots. So its been around for a long while.

If you Google maggot debridement you will learn more than you want including:
Authoritative facts from the New Zealand Dermatological Society.
YouTube videos.
Maggot suppliers.
and other things.

Blacksmith

[gnoahhh]

Man, I hope y'all get to feeling better!

Last year this time I was at the range when I felt something crawling up my left leg inside my jeans. I brushed at it/knocked it down and out rolled a little brown and black banded fuzzy caterpillar. The next day I had the most godawful itchy rash up and down my leg where that bugger had been, then my leg started to swell. I went on line and Googled it and discovered that those caterpillars (known as ***** Caterpillars- I kid you not) have a poison on the end of all those tiny barbs that give them that fuzzy look, and if they penetrate your skin they break off in there and release the poison. I toughed it out and the swelling went down but the itch stayed and morphed into a whole lot of little red bumps. The insane itching took months to finally go away.

Moral of the story: beware those cute little caterpillars for now is the time of year they come out., and if you do tangle with one get thee hence to a doctor. "Toughing it out" only prolonged the agony.

[Bret4207]

I was going to add something about the foolishness of self medicating with "half bottles" of anti inflamitories.............And how something like this can turn into a lost foot or leg.........and how about what happens if this is or develops into a blood clot and it rushes to your heart..........and how you should get your *** to a good doctor in a good hospital...........But we all know all this, so I won't preach.......

:lol:

Yeah, but I'm one of those guys that spends half his time HOPING that freakin' asteroid will smack into the earth before my next mortgager payment is due! You really think a mere foot or leg or aneurism looks all that bad from this wretched position?:veryconfu

[Bad Water Bill]

For ten's of thousands of years we all self medicated. Every one kept roots,seeds,leaves etc to take care of most bad things. It has only been in the last 100 years or so that we have been told we are to stupid to take care of ourselves.

Today you run to some person who calls them self a DR. The dr and their associates across the country account for more deaths each year than anything short of cars. They have you sit in a small room with many other folks who are glad to share their ills with you. When your turn comes the DR takes 5 minutes of their valuable time to guess what is wrong with you (price $50-100 dollars per guess)
Now they write out a recipe to cure you and send you to the drug store (used to keep that stuff in the rafters) and again you pay lots of dollars for the (hopefully) cure. Boy haven't we got smarter in the last century.

[MtGun44]

Bret,

Sounds like you are getting this behind you. Take care of yourself. Did the doc
identify this as a staph infection for sure? Is this what the tabloids scream out
as "flesh eating bacteria"?

As to my thumb "adventure" from about 5 yrs ago, I realized that that particular cut was a
very unusual situation. I had cut the thumb some time earlier, going about 95% thru the
skin, but not drawing blood. This was healing up and was one of those little cuts that just sits
there open and fills in from the bottom over a few days. At the bottom is almost no skin. I managed
to "luck out" and hit the exact spot the second time and put the new cut into the area where there
was essentially no skin. Innoculated the bacteria right below the skin. The two things that I
think made a diff are not cutting through normal skin didn't do the normal wiping action that
may keep out some bacteria, plus it did not bleed, which might have rinsed out some bacteria.

Worst possible case. I'm convinced that the apple had been rinsed in contaminated water
and I had failed to wash it. Lessons learned. I was really starting to wonder if I was going to
lose my thumb on my 'master hand'.

The idea the maggots for people is new is wrong. A friend is a pharmacist at the VA. He
tells me that there are official "medical grade" maggots that can be used by docs. The primary
use is cleaning up gangrene of the feet for diabetics that don't take care of themselves. The
maggots only eat dead tissue, working painlessly and more accurately than people can do.
Apparently been used for many years. Sounds pretty icky but apparently they do a great job.

Bill

[Bret4207]

Seems there are multiple types of staph according to my dermatologist. She said the flesh eating jobbies are something she's never seen, only read about. I consider that a good thing.

Gabby, gotta agree with you for the most part. It's nice that we have doctors that can set bones and sew up wounds, but a GP I used to hang with years back said a lot of the work is guesswork and process of elimination. They have a fancy name for it, but it's kinda like on "House" to a much smaller, more realistic degree- you keep trying something till you hit the mark or the guy dies. It's the arrogance and refusal to bear responsibility that gets me. My vet can diagnose a torn ligament without multiple xrays, EKGs, catscans and blood tests. My vet has done more surgery in a month than most any surgeon does in a lifetime and never has problems with infection, even on the farm in not so clean conditions. My vet will outright tell you if he hasn't got a clue or if something is really bad. He'll also tell you if it's going to take a lot of work on my part and the general cost right at the start. He'll hand me meds and tell me about generic non-meds that are just as, if not more, effective I can get at the store or garden center rather than buy vet grade stuff. If I call with certain types of problems he'll advise me how to fix it myself using exotic items like dental floss, rubber bands, vinegar, epsom salts, crazy glue, sugar, honey and a soldering iron. I kinda like my vet, the large animal guy anyway. The doggy and kitty vet is a money grubbing type that used to be a nice guy back when he was struggling to get by and driving a rusty '92 S-10. Now it's not 1, but TWO 4 door, 4wd diesel 3/4 ton leather gut GMCs with all the trimmings. He's still a nice guy outside the office, but it's $60.00 to walk in the door. People change.

Anyways, if we held the docs to the same standards we hold plumbers. carpenters, accountants, mail order outfits, firemen, cops, our highway crews, airlines, etc. we'd all be crazy mad with them all the time. i don't believe in malpractice suits in general and think a lot of it is bull, but a giant sized dose of humility from the med profession would do a lot for them overall.

[MtGun44]

Part of the problem (not all for sure) is that docs are scared to death of getting sued, so this
means they do a lot more testing. They know that if they DON'T do a CAT scan, and some
bad thing happens, they will be on the stand with an idiot lawyer saying, sarcastically " So,
you didn't even do a CAT scan, cutting corners again and it cost my poor client the use of
his arm. I think you owe him $25 million dollars." And a jury of fools agrees. They call
it defensive medicine - never a good thing. Darned lawyers.

Bill

[firefly1957]

Not just getting sued either doctors have to follow the insurance company rules also This week I was in because I hurt my shoulder doctor told He will need to do a MRI but has to run a series of X-rays first that will show nothing 90% of the time but is required first by insurance. In the mean time I have to wait to get Xrays diagnosed before they will approve MRI!