Archive for November 19th, 2007

Day 19

Monday, November 19th, 2007

Even though I did show her off two days ago, her Daddy (who is my nephew by love) asked his Mom why I wasn’t talking about her, here. So, once again, Miss Amy. Isn’t she precious? Now, her Daddy needs to get her here for me to hold her. ahem.

Love you, Daniel.

Yes, my friends read this site. In fact, they have known about it for years and if I go too long without updating they holler at me. My family reads as well. You’ll find them commenting from time to time (although not often enough, hint, hint.)

I have a fantastic family and group of friends. In fact my friends are my family as well as we have all known one another most of our lives. Last night, Tracey called to let us know that Danny (the hand holding Amy in the picture above) was in surgery for an infection, probably MRSA in his right hand. They had to split the skin and remove some tissue but that is all we know at this point. Tracey is keeping me updated on him.

Years ago I wrote about superbugs, including MRSA when one almost killed my father. Daddy underwent multiple surgeries, lost a lot of flesh and muscle, and ended up with some nerve damage from it. He was lucky as they really thought he wasn’t going to make it.

That bug, and the ones that are all over the news, are caused by the overuse of antibiotics and “antibacterial” everything. Triclosan, which is the standard antibacterial ingredient, only kills off the weaker bacteria, so it leaves the stronger ones to thrive and grow. And infect people, and kill some of those it infects.

These superbugs are our fault for not listening. For using antibiotics too much, for not finishing a prescription off and allowing the stronger bugs to multiply, for using soaps with triclosan instead of plain old soap. We can’t go back in time but, we can make the future of these bacteria different. Throw out any of the antibacterial crap you have. If you need to use anything, use bleach on surfaces and use the alcohol based hand sanitizers.

They kill off the bacteria, even the strong ones, instead of just killing off the weaker ones. And, with all of the MRSA and other staph variants floating around you should be washing your hands very well. Keep any open spots (wounds, scratches, etc.) covered. If you are in the hospital or visiting one be twice as vigilant. The same goes for nursing homes or other skilled nursing facilities. Be careful but do not make the problem worse by using antibacterial products.

If nothing else, do it for that cute little baby and her Grandpa Danny.

Day 18

Monday, November 19th, 2007

Look at this 18 days and I continue to update. Who would’ve believed it? With Holidailies coming I should be way back into the habit.

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Today was going better, when I woke up this morning and first unwrapped my incision and was going to clean it and rebandage it, it looked good. It is much closer to completely being healed. I got in bandaged back up and went about my day.

At one point, I was in the kitchen, in my wheelchair doing some stuff and I rolled forward, into the cupboard. Now, I can’t bend my foot enough to put it on a foot peg on my chair so it is stuck out, and it ran into the cabinet, and bent up.

As soon as my foot hit, and bent up, I felt the ripping pain and knew what had happened. When I got back into my room and set to rebandage it again, I pulled the dressing off, and just as I knew it was, part of the incision was reopened.

I could kick myself, I was so close to a fully healed incision and once the incision is could to go, I’m allowed to slowly start putting weight back on my foot. With this set back it will probably be another week. In the full scheme of this healing another week isn’t that much. I know I’m looking at up to a year of healing time from this surgery. It was a fairly big deal surgery. Not only was part of the bone removed, and resectioned, my Achilles tendon was taken off my foot and had to be reattached, higher up, with titanium bolts. Then, I had multiple holes poked into the tendon plus some other stuff done.

So, yes, a lot of stuff done to one small area. Which does explain why it is a long recovery, especially because I am diabetic. I am a well controlled diabetic but, it still adds to the recovery. I am not sure of the reasoning but following surgery diabetics tend to have higher blood sugar no matter how well controlled they normally are.

Another thing that drove my sugar up earlier this year was cortisone shots in my foot. I had cortisone injected in hopes of lessening the pain in my feet. It helped a bit, as did the strapping but, not enough to stop any surgery. Now, I’m awaiting the verdict on my left foot. There is a chance that I can forgo the surgery on it, if the pain lessens once I can use my right foot properly. There is no guarantee of this but, Dr D is hopeful.

I have already told him that I plan on holding off on that surgery until after my weight loss surgery so that I have less weight to heft around on one foot. The doctors wouldn’t go on with my wls before I had one foot done but, this is just extremely difficult to deal with at this weight.

Not to say that the one footed thing is easy to deal with at any weight but, if you weight 120 pounds it has to be a lot easier to heft your ass around. And, with that, I’m hefting my ass off to get some more stuff done. Have a great Monday.