debxena

Thank you everyone for your comments on the previous post. They were all really appreciated :)

Al's doing much better - I visited him in hospital yesterday and he was practically perky! His temperature was down and the redness in his legs had gone, but they were still pumping IV antibiotics into him. He had to stay another night, but will probably be home today. I took him in some Wendy's - he's spent enough time in hospital to know how much he hates the food there. While he'll pick at it he won't get much into it. So fast-food it was.

He and I are both a little surprised that the doctors aren't concerned about how easily the cellulitis hits him. Generally for the infection to take hold there needs to be a scratch or cut or bite for it to slip in under the skin. For him it's an almost instantaneous thing - all it takes is for him to stretch a little far, and it hits like a cramp (which is how he initially described it). I have a theory that the perpetual swelling of his legs, plus the lesions, means when he stretches tiny cracks appear between the lesions and the rest of his skin. It's a possibility, anyhow.

Funnily enough, while I didn't go with him to hospital on Wednesday for him to be admitted, I was there 12 hours later - someone very close to me found out the other day that her pregnancy was not progressing, and that while the fetus had stopped growing a few weeks earlier, it hadn't miscarried. While I was at their place for dinner, she started to cramp very badly and was in massive amounts of pain (also: bleeding). She has a bicorneal uterus, and both her gynae and GP had recommended going to the hospital if she started to bleed heavily and pass clots. So I drove her and her husband into the A&E department a little after 9pm. They sent me home about 12:30, and I found out the next morning that they'd also been sent home about 3am. But they're off to the Early Pregnancy Centre at Greenlane this morning. Hopefully they'll be more of a help, and will get it sorted.

Between Al, my friend, and an uncle of mine who had heart surgery, I've now visited every floor of Auckland hospital now, bar one (there are 9 floors, for those who don't know). *shakes head* It is a little scary how well I know my way around there. I told Ben the same, and he tells me that I've been around more of it than he has, and he used to work for the ADHB!

The downside for me of all of this is that Wednesday really wiped me out. So while there's stuff at work that needs to be done, I just don't have the energy to be there. Aside from visiting Al yesterday I stayed home. Today I need to hit the supermarket, and tomorrow is a wedding for a friend of Ben's. Can't exactly flake out on the wedding!

ETA: Al's just arrived home. Spoke to his primary Infectious Diseases specialist (who was surprised to see him there - looks like he hadn't been told). He agrees with my theory about the infection getting in. Al has two weeks of pill-form antibiotics, then they're going to keep him taking them three days a week as a preventative measure. Additionally, I now need to moisturise his legs every second day to try and reduce the dryness. Fingers crossed that it all helps!