lucky to be alive I'm told...

Saturday afternoon (June 11, 2011) I came to the Memorial Hospital ER to find out what the hard lump on my left hip was (see previous post for picture).  After spending about 4 hours in the ER, I had a CT Scan done and then after waiting an hour for the results, found out that I had a massive pus pocket! This stretched from the area where my hematoma was drained to my left hip. The ER doctor informed me that I would have to get the pocket removed by operation.

Dr. Linda Camp performed the surgery... the initial guess was that the pus pocket was 9x3x15cm, but she said to me after the operation that the pus extended to the right side of my body, down my left hip, around to my back and up by my belly button.  She cut along the incision previously made by Dr. Bradley.  I went into surgery some time around 11p.m. and got into my recovery room around 1:30 a.m.  After Dr. Camp explained that the pus pocket was much larger than expected, she informed me that I would have 2 wide open wounds that would have to heal from the inside out so no infection was trapped in.

I am in severe pain, on 6mg of morphine every 2 hours and still feel like hell =(  I can't believe I'm here at the hospital and dealing with this.  I had to be operated on!  It started to all sink in....

Sunday, Dr. Camp came to change my wound dressings and I got to see what I was dealing with for the first time.... warning... it's disgusting and graphic!!!

Yeah.... so I cried. Like all day.  And all night.  I'm so upset. How the fuck does this happen?!?!?!  I was so careful and now I have these HUGE holes in me that are going to take AT A MINIMUM 2 months to heal!  The test results of the pus came back and I have BOTH strep infection and a staph infection!!!!!!!!!   I am a mommy of 2 small kids and I can't even pick up my babies for a month!  Their birthday parties are going to be cancelled because I won't be healed enough by July 2 to host a party =(  It's my daughter's first birthday =( =( =( =(

The changing of the dressing is SOOOOOOO painful.  I scream every time they pull out the gauze and stuff new gauze back in even with the morphine.  I don't even care what the scar looks like, I want to be healed with no death scare!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And when am I going to get a regular shower?  Or be able to stretch my arms, or bend over to pick something up?!  My life is so jacked!  I'm trying to stay positive but the last 4 weeks have been HELL and it only is getting worse! 

Dr. Camp explained to me that I'm lucky to be alive.... the infection started where the penrose drain from the hematoma had been removed and had spread to a large amount of my abdomen... yet it never went to my blood stream which would have easily taken my life =/

Will update when I get out of this hospital bed =(