What an experience this has been! May 2010 to present
Brett had mentioned to me that his elbow was sore and it felt warm on like a Wednesday in May. I thought his elbow did feel somewhat warm but we went about normal life and didn't think much of it. Except he mentioned it everyday. I decided on Monday of the following week I would make him go to the doctor just to make sure everything was ok. Our doctor was not in and we had to see someone else in the practice which wasn't a big deal . . . (we thought). While in the process of explaining the situation to her she was extremely rude to Brett and when he told her his elbow felt warm she barely touched it and told him it was normal. gave us a RX for an anti-inflammatory for tendonitis and sent us on our way.
By Thursday morning this is what his elbow looked like. UMM- I don't think it's tendonitis.
By Friday his arm looked like Popye's. He was headed out of town the next week so we knew he needed to get back in to the doctor immediately. Which for the doctor ended up being 4:00 in the afternoon. As soon as our doctor saw us she got right on the phone with a specialist telling them they needed to see us right away. We headed to their office, she told us it was either gout, or septic bursitis.
They placed a needle into his elbow to draw out a sample to test. Gave us some antibiotics and sent us home with several RX's for antibiotics. Told us if it got worse to go to the ER.
It got worse. His arm was red and swollen from his bicep to his wrist. It was very hot and just didn't look right! The doctors at the ER agreed with the diagnosis the specialist had medicated him for, however the infection in his arm and had spread. Since it was a holiday weekend we were unable to get the test results back to determine exactly what we were dealing with.
They set Brett up with an IV of some heavy doses of antibiotics. They told him he would be on the IV's for several days and would be sending a home nurse to teach us how to administer it. Here we are thinking how is he going to do this while out of town it will be really interesting! After a long night in the ER we stopped at the local Village Inn for a little grub. It's amazing how slow they are at 2:30 in the morning. I felt bad for Brett since he couldn't feed himself because his elbow was so swollen and sore he could not bend it and now he had a IV in his other arm and could not bend it either.
We went back to the ER a couple of days later to have the IV line changed and have another evaluation. When the doctor looked at Brett's arm he told him there was no way he was going out of town and would most likely need surgery on his elbow. What? This is not we were planning, just give him some antibiotics and everything will be ok right?
2 days later Brett had to undergo surgery. He had a raging case of staph infection and the doctor told him it probably would not heal in a reasonable time without surgery. And also at least a month off of work.
While coming out of the anesthesia in the recovery room Brett thought he was hilarious, I feel sorry for the nurses for what they have to put up with from all patients! After his surgery I had to wheel him down to have a pic line installed because of how long he would be on the antibiotics and how hard they are on your veins.
Brett reminded me of Barbie - he couldn't use either arm and both were bent at the elbow.
A week or so after the surgery . . . WOW!
The night before the stitches came out
A couple of weeks after the surgery Brett woke me up in the middle of the night because his arm was on fire. We unwrapped it and took of the splint to find a ragging case of hives. He was more miserable from the hives than the surgery itself. They took forever to go away. We think he had an allergic reaction to the splint but not sure.
His pic line just before we took it out, a month of antibiotics every couple of hours was nice to be done with!!!
