Erythema Nodosum (Part 2)
Posted on May 5, 2011[Continued from "Erythema Nodosum (Part 1)."]
Two days after my initial visit to the wound clinic, and after taking the prescribed antibiotics, my legs were getting worse. The bumps had far surpassed their initial marker outlines. My left foot had swelled to the point where I couldn’t wear shoes other than flip-flops. It was a good thing it was October, one of the nicest months weather-wise in San Francisco, so wearing flip-flops didn’t seem out of place.
What did seem out of place was my swollen foot, and the bright red bumps on both calves. Lest anyone think I was just worried about my looks, let it be known that I was in pain most of the time. Every time I brought my legs down from their elevated position and blood rushed back to them it was excruciating. Good thing I only had to get up to go to the bathroom, and to take Isis out to the bathroom, and to get myself something to eat, and to do anything since I was living alone.
Back to the wound clinic I went. More questions about my lifestyle, which, because I had stopped shaving and had cut down on painful showers, was seeming more homeless and less upwardly mobile urban homeowner. Painful showers? Yes, painful showers. Whenever anything, including water, touched my legs, it hurt.
The pain was horrible, but it wasn’t constant. The worst pain was the transition from supine to upright and the first few steps, but after I was moving for a while it didn’t hurt at all. By the time I walked from my place to the hospital’s wound clinic I felt fine. My legs and my left foot still looked horrible though.
I was given a prescription for a stronger antibiotic. Because I didn’t have insurance – or money – I picked up the drugs at the hospital’s pharmacy, a process that involved waiting in two separate lines, sometimes for upwards of an hour, on legs that hurt. Fun times.
In the mean time, poor Isis wasn’t getting walked by me and she was becoming increasingly fussy. The Ex and I had gotten Isis together and had agreed to share in her care after we broke up. At the time it meant she lived with me and he bought and delivered her food. Every once in a while he’d take her for visits. I asked him to take her until I could walk her again. I was having trouble taking care of myself at that point since when I wasn’t at the hospital I was resting with my legs elevated.
I took the antibiotics exactly as prescribed, even going so far as to wake up in the middle of the night so I wouldn’t miss a dose. My legs got worse. Instead of red bumps I had huge red areas that hurt if anything touched them. My left foot looked like a giant baby’s foot. I was miserable.
Back to the wound clinic. No one could understand why my particular case of cellulitis was not responding to the antibiotics. Obviously I needed even stronger antibiotics if I was to get better. The stronger ones I couldn’t get at the hospital’s pharmacy because they were intravenous.
After making sure I’d be able to keep to a schedule, which was difficult for many of the people SFGH served, I was told to go to the hospital twice a day for the IV antibiotics.
My veins are difficult to find, and once found they collapse. I would make a really shitty IV drug user. Add to that the fact that the antibiotics they were going to pump into me were known to degrade veins and I soon looked like I had been shooting up heroin for years.
[Continued.]
I swear. True story.
Tags: disaster, sexy?, SF love, walking contradiction
Categories: True Story.
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