Re: open phones
Posted: 2019/03/07 15:16:33 UTC
And mine's a cane.
Somewhere around the beginning of last week I started experiencing mild fever and muscle ache. Went downhill a bit such that the ache concentrated in both anterior thigh areas and ramped up to pain. Then all the right thigh pain migrated to the left and started getting seriously unpleasant. I was thinking bacterial infection and expecting/hoping it would run its course.
But... Somewhere before my 2019/03/01 20:56:16 UTC post things started majorly deteriorating. Left thigh pain level off the scale, swollen, couldn't bend the leg, major effort to get upright and briefly mobile. Was still hoping that this would run its course or that I'd be able to get away with a visit to my Kaiser Permanente doc and a prescription of antibiotics. (The right leg had gotten better all by itself after all, right?) Scheduled a late Monday morning slot - gave my doc a rundown of what had been going on and notified her that I'd be needing a wheelchair.
Majorly taxed my physical resources to prep for the run and had to start mid Sunday. Was really worried about getting to and into the car - back seat, sideways, back against the rear left side door, legs across the seat - at the top of the driveway. But that turned out to be surprisingly easy.
HM drove me in, helped get me extracted and upright, dumped me as near to the door as possible, parked. (Same building, floor, as the 2018/06/28 Capital Gazette mass shooting, by the way.) Got myself in and to the first - unmanned - desk, people in the waiting room took one look at me and were tripping all over each other to get me connected to a wheelchair. Then had to figure out the procedure for getting myself down into that equipment.
Nah, wasn't gonna be able to go back home with a bottle of a week's worth of pills. Oh well, I'd tried.
Under a mile down the road to the Anne Arundel Medical Center ER. They got me started on without too much of a nightmare delay and I got connected with a doc I like. When they were taking blood I insisted they check my INR (clotting speed) 'cause I was worried about what was going on with anticoagulant dosage. Infection remained the prime suspect until MRI results came in. I'd been bleeding into the muscle tissue. And my INR was 6.0. (Target range is 2-3.)
So they started getting issues dealt with that evening and by the next (Tuesday) morning the pain was out of the equation. Was supposed to have gotten outta here yesterday morning but we're going with Apixaban (Eliquis) instead of Warfarin subsequent to this disaster and that translated to several more hoops so I'm still stuck here plugged into a pump. Almost certainly later today though.
Leg improves a bit each day but it'll probably take a couple weeks before I'm walking normally again.
A bit pissed off about all this though 'cause I'd gone in for an INR check on 2019/02/08 almost immediately after being notified to. They didn't say anything to me, sat me down, sucked out a vial's worth. Logged in to check the INR that evening. They'd done a couple dozen other tests nobody had told me anything about but not the INR. And I was steamed and didn't feel like making the duplicate effort real soon. This might not have happened if they hadn't fucked up their job. But on the other hand a lot can happen with this chemistry over the course of a couple weeks.
Somewhere around the beginning of last week I started experiencing mild fever and muscle ache. Went downhill a bit such that the ache concentrated in both anterior thigh areas and ramped up to pain. Then all the right thigh pain migrated to the left and started getting seriously unpleasant. I was thinking bacterial infection and expecting/hoping it would run its course.
But... Somewhere before my 2019/03/01 20:56:16 UTC post things started majorly deteriorating. Left thigh pain level off the scale, swollen, couldn't bend the leg, major effort to get upright and briefly mobile. Was still hoping that this would run its course or that I'd be able to get away with a visit to my Kaiser Permanente doc and a prescription of antibiotics. (The right leg had gotten better all by itself after all, right?) Scheduled a late Monday morning slot - gave my doc a rundown of what had been going on and notified her that I'd be needing a wheelchair.
Majorly taxed my physical resources to prep for the run and had to start mid Sunday. Was really worried about getting to and into the car - back seat, sideways, back against the rear left side door, legs across the seat - at the top of the driveway. But that turned out to be surprisingly easy.
HM drove me in, helped get me extracted and upright, dumped me as near to the door as possible, parked. (Same building, floor, as the 2018/06/28 Capital Gazette mass shooting, by the way.) Got myself in and to the first - unmanned - desk, people in the waiting room took one look at me and were tripping all over each other to get me connected to a wheelchair. Then had to figure out the procedure for getting myself down into that equipment.
Nah, wasn't gonna be able to go back home with a bottle of a week's worth of pills. Oh well, I'd tried.
Under a mile down the road to the Anne Arundel Medical Center ER. They got me started on without too much of a nightmare delay and I got connected with a doc I like. When they were taking blood I insisted they check my INR (clotting speed) 'cause I was worried about what was going on with anticoagulant dosage. Infection remained the prime suspect until MRI results came in. I'd been bleeding into the muscle tissue. And my INR was 6.0. (Target range is 2-3.)
So they started getting issues dealt with that evening and by the next (Tuesday) morning the pain was out of the equation. Was supposed to have gotten outta here yesterday morning but we're going with Apixaban (Eliquis) instead of Warfarin subsequent to this disaster and that translated to several more hoops so I'm still stuck here plugged into a pump. Almost certainly later today though.
Leg improves a bit each day but it'll probably take a couple weeks before I'm walking normally again.
A bit pissed off about all this though 'cause I'd gone in for an INR check on 2019/02/08 almost immediately after being notified to. They didn't say anything to me, sat me down, sucked out a vial's worth. Logged in to check the INR that evening. They'd done a couple dozen other tests nobody had told me anything about but not the INR. And I was steamed and didn't feel like making the duplicate effort real soon. This might not have happened if they hadn't fucked up their job. But on the other hand a lot can happen with this chemistry over the course of a couple weeks.