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Medical

Infections Abound

A couple weeks ago now, I went to Ohio to see my brother. I haven’t been to his place in nearly five years, so it was a pretty big event. When I got home, my roommate brought sickness with, and so did my mom. It took me a few days, but eventually the sickness did catch up with me and I ended up quite sick and lost three days of work.

It was quite a sickness, every day seemed to draw with it a new problem. Throughout all of it was a soar throat (which really showed itself in my roommate who had problems swallowing almost the entire sickness and sometimes even difficulty breathing).

On Sunday, the fever had subsided a bit and while I was still hacking up lungs and what not, I figured I was good enough to return to work the next day. However, my health did not agree with me. At about 1:30 in the morning, I woke up to a sweltering ear ache that showed nothing but infection. I looked online and noted that ibuprofen helps so I took one and went back to bed. When I woke up I decided I shouldn’t be going to work and should instead go to urgent care to get my ear checked out.

I go to Urgent care and they very quickly agree that it is an ear infection in the left ear. I ask whether the right ear is infected and the doctor assures me that it is not and gives me a prescription for amoxacillan. I actually feel that this experience is kind of what I expect out of seeing a doctor. I have a problem, I go and get checked out, they offer a solution to fix the problem. [1. Too bad other departments don’t agree. If interventional radiology had the same problem, they probably would decide the best solution is to cut off my ear to stop the infection.]

About three hours after I spoke with the doctor in Urgent Care, I started having the same pain in my right ear as well… This prompted me to also not go to work on Tuesday. However, since then I have been taking the pills, I have started to feel much better and hope that the infections are gone completely in a short amount of time.

My port on the other hand is a different story. The problems continue to get worse. The x-rays proved negative, but on Tuesday while washing it in the bath, the blister over the port opened up slightly and started to bleed and expel puss. Yesterday, I contacted interventional radiology and sent a picture. Today I went in an they did sonograms and found that there was a packet of something surrounding the port. They took a culture of whatever it was and sent it to the lab and are yet again hoping to find something else.

It was a trying day, and I will probably relate it at another time. But for now, I guess it is good to know that someone is finally looking at it and taking it seriously. But it isn’t right that it had to get to this point in order to get that point. This hospital definitely doesn’t understand the concept of preventative care. I did lodge a formal complaint with the hospital and we will see what comes of that…