On August 31, I left my mom at hospice about noon, feeling OK, except for my knee being sore. I had a total replacement done on this knee about 9 months ago and it'd been feeling OK, I think I slept on it wrong. The hospice rooms are very nice, but the sleeping arrangements for family members leave a bit to be desired. I'm looking forward to getting home and working on my neglected garden—I'm not going back to my mom's until tomorrow night so I actually get to sleep in my own bed for the first time in weeks!
I get home, get out of the car and now I'm noticeably limping...this is very strange. I decide to take my cane with me to go out to garden and within an hour I'm very glad I did. I can hardly put any weight on my left knee and its swelling! HUH? I decide to take it easy the rest of the day, thinking that maybe I twisted it or something.
The next morning, I'm on crutches and have a fever! I call a friend to first take me to my meeting(its too late to cancel and I'm the presenter) and then he drops me off at the hospital. I call my husband to let him know where I'm at, I tell the staff that my knee is bothering me and that I have a fever. They ask their “normal” questions: Shortness of breath? Some, but that's from my asthma. Chest pain? No, but I did have some lung/bronchial pain this morning—NEVER SAY THESE WORDS!!!
They put me in an examining room—first thing? EKG...why do I need an EKG for my knee? They ask me my name and birth date for each procedure. Temp is 103 degrees! The doc tells me that I will be getting a lung scan and some x-rays, and he thinks I should have a stress test when I get back to my doc. I tell him I had one a couple of years ago-my heart is fine. Well you just complained about chest pain...I said No, I complained about LUNG pain, not chest. “We have to be careful” were the last words....WHAT ABOUT MY KNEE!?!?!?!?!?!??! Oh...yeah...it looks like there's some infection and the tests we're doing will tell us more.
I'm wheeled into the Lung Scan machine—its actually kind of neat in a geeky sort of way. Its a smaller tube than an MRI, you're placed on a table, similar to taking x-rays or an MRI and they take “pictures” of your lungs—like a cat scan, but the lung scanner moves, not you. The staff rotates it around to get pictures of your lungs from front, both sides and back so they can tell if you have any real respiratory issues. Neat, huh? After the lung scan, they wheeled me into the old fashioned x-ray, but they had me stay on the gurney instead of changing to the table under the machine.
So, now I go back to the ER stall(there is room for 3 patients in each room with these nice little curtains between them to simulate privacy). I wait for the tests. I've now been here for oh...about 3 hours. They've decided that I'm able to eat and drink on my own. They've also found out that I DO NOT use a bed pan—I can't, just that simple. Plus, there are 2 male patients in the room with me and I just don't think I want to pee with 2 men right there, call me silly. So, the nurse wheels me down to the bathroom when I have to use it. Since they have a wheelchair, they don't want me using my crutches to assist with my getting on the toilet...they wheel me in as close as they can and then leave me there to sort of defend for myself. I pull the string when I'm done for assistance and
They hook me up to the evil IV machine for fluids and some antibiotics and tell me that I'll be going up stairs fairly soon. They've also attached this heart telemetry thing to me which I really don't understand—I Don't Have Heart Problems! Probably one of the worst parts of this is how much the patient is ignored. After 2 normal EKG's, they still won't let it go!
The doc finally comes back in to tell me they think that I have cellulitus in my left knee, an infection of the skin, which I could have picked up in the hospital or nursing home that my mother has been in. Oh Great. They are trying to clear the infection with antibiotics and my normal doctors will see me tomorrow, both have been notified. OK then so 6 hours after I arrived...I'm taken up to the 4th floor of Good Samaritan Hospital—wait, the 4th FLOOR?!?!? That's not the right floor, that's the heart patient floor!!!! Yep, ladies and gentlemen, I'm now considered a “heart patient” with no symptoms, but they could show up at any time!!!!! AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH.
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