Start Of Antibiotic Regimen

May 3, 2023

Today, I started a six-week-long regimen of daily intravenous antibiotics at home for yet another cellulitis infection, as per my podiatrist.

Yesterday evening, I arrived home from Boca Raton Regional Hospital in Boca Raton, Florida, after 12 days. Each day, I received intravenous antibiotics for a cellulitis infection in my right ankle/foot due to a lingering diabetic ulcer in my right foot. (I also have a lingering diabetic ulcer in my left foot, partially from a surgery.)

I receive the intravenous antibiotic by push method through a PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line installed in my left arm. It runs from a port in my left upper arm 49 cm (19 19/64 inches) through my veins and ends near my heart. A nurse came to our home this afternoon to administer it. She will teach me how to do it, so I can then administer it to myself. (I have administered it to my before.) She would still visit me once per week to extract blood for testing.

I recently fell twice, which caused hairline fractures in both of my right ankle bones (tibia and fibula) and tendonitis (tendon inflammation). An MRI found that I do NOT have osteomyelitis (bone infection) in my right ankle/foot, although my podiatrist mentioned that it showed anomalies in both of my feet and and in one of my toes in my right foot.

However, a radioactive body scan determined that I have avascular necrosis (death of bone tissue due to a lack of blood supply) in a bone or bones in my right ankle. The scan also discovered inflammation in the lower right quadrant of my abdomen. (Last year, I was diagnosed with gall stones, but this seems unrelated. There was mention of my appendix.)

I have been hospitalized many times during recent years with cellulitis infections within both of my legs, separately, due to lingering diabetic ulcers in both of my feet. I have done the six-week-long program several times at home and also outpatient. When I did this regimen in early 2021, both of my kidneys stopped functioning. I required six weeks of dialysis (four straight hours, seven days per week) before my kidneys regained functionality. At that time, my white-blood-cell count dropped to near zero, but soon returned to normalcy after I stopped taking that particular antibiotic.

I have had four surgeries on my left foot: one to remove a decayed bone due to osteomyelitis from a lingering diabetic ulcer; two to remove a toe joint and bone fragments due to osteomyelitis; and one to remove a benign tumor that was growing within a diabetic ulcer.