New Dressing On PICC

February 23, 2024, at home

This morning, my nurse changed the dressing on my PICC line. I am in the midst of yet another six-week-long regimen of daily intravenous antibiotic infusions. He arrives every day around 9 a.m. to administer two bags of two types of intravenous antibiotics for osteomyelitis (a bone infection) in my fractured right ankle and cellulitis (an infection below the top layer of skin of my right ankle and foot.

My right ankle is still swollen and causing me pain, but it seems to be getting slightly better. I still can't stand on it without severe pain.

Around 8 p.m. every day, my wonderful wife infuses a third bag of intravenous antibiotics into me. This bag is the same as one of the other antibiotics that I receive each morning.

I started this regimen on February 6, 2024, at Delray Medical Center after I was admitted with shortness of breath and a swollen, painful right ankle. So, my last day of infusions is probably on March 19, 2024. I was released from the hospital after eight days on February 13, 2024, after extensive testing of my right ankle (X-rays, MRI) and my chest/lungs (X-ray, two CT scans).

After an X-ray and a CT scan of my chest, it was determined that I have a six-inch-long "wire" about the width of a hair embedded in a blood vessel between my heart and my lung. Another CT scan (this time with contrast) and then another test which involved the insertion of a camera into the right side of my groin to look at the blood vessel between my heart and my lung determined that the best course of action was and is for doctors to leave it there rather than to cut me open to remove it. It does NOT seem to be the cause of my recurring infections because my body has since coated it. The wire is either a broken part of one of my many PICC lines over recent years or a guide wire that was broken when installing one of my many PICC lines.

I have had five surgeries in the last two years, so NOT cutting me back open is the prudent decision:

March 2022: quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery

May 2022: chest surgery

May 2022: chest surgery

September 2023: minor spine surgery

October 2023: major spine surgery