Going Home (Soon)

May 1, 2024, Delray Medical Center

GOING HOME !!!

I am being discharged today after entering the Delray Medical Center (hospital) on April 17, 2024, with difficulty breathing and with osteomyelitis (bone infection) within my right ankle. I was also suffering from severe edema in both of my legs.

I am feeling better, but I still need time to mend with upcoming weeks of daily intravenous antibiotic infusions at home. It's difficult to comprehend that I have been in the hospital for two weeks. It certainly doesn't seem that long.

May 1, 2024, Delray Medical Center

UPDATE:

DAMN !!! I have been told that I now only need to continue my daily intravenous antibiotic infusions at home for just a few more days, ending May 4, 2024, instead of the anticipated four to six more weeks. That's GOOD NEWS, but I am disturbed because my surgery yesterday to install a PICC line in a vein in my neck that travels through veins near my heart and with two ports sticking out of my left chest was deemed necessary. (See photo below.)

I understand that it's hospital protocol to discharge patients with PICC lines instead of with regular intravenous ports due to safety (and probably legal) reasons, but I was seriously expecting longer-term medication.

I am grateful that I will soon finalize my intravenous-antibiotic regimen, but I am still bothered that the doctor surgically rigged me with this contraption. I do NOT blame the doctor because his job is to install the lines not to govern the amount of time that they are used.

At one time yesterday, I had three lines in me: the PICC line and regular intravenous lines in veins in both of my wrists. The one in my right wrist has since been removed. The nurse will remove the line in my left wrist before I return home today.

For the last two weeks, I have been receiving multiple intravenous-antibiotic infusions every day here at the hospital.

In recent years, I have endured at least ten six-week-long regimens of daily intravenous antibiotics for infections within the bones and under the skin of my feet and legs, and within my spine. (I have had four surgeries in my left foot and two surgeries in my lower spine.)

I am familiar with the PICC line in my neck. I had the same type of line installed in my neck a few years ago for six weeks, when I endured daily (temporary) dialysis due to a bad reaction to a specific intravenous antibiotic. Both of my kidneys failed, but thankfully both returned to full function. I also had a similar catheter installed directly into my neck immediately following my quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery in March 2022. (In May 2022, I required two related reconstructive chest surgeries.)