pwndcake

And here's another story of idiocy and stress from the dialysis unit:

My dialysis access is a little old. They've been using the same vein for the last 10 years, and it's starting to show a little wear and tear. Some of you may remember that a few months back I had surgery to fix some of the damage, but that hasn't made it any more durable. Lots of scar tissue + damaged immune system = problems. It has problems with clotting, and the area that has had the most use tends to bruise, or worse.

After dialysis on Monday I noticed something on my arm - a small yellowish dot. This wasn't a bright, sunny kind of yellow, but that greenish icky type of yellow that most of us call puss. Mmmm, puss. I know that color well. It was a small dot, maybe the size of the tip of a ball point pen, but I don't fuck around when it's come to infections. Especially when they're about 1mm of weak flesh away from a major blood vessel. I called over the tech to take a look at it, and she in turn called over the on-staff nurse.

Our cast of characters is Me (played by your lovable narrator), Tech (played by Rita, who is awesome), and Nurse (played by the nurse whose name I never learned because I dislike her so much).

me: Hey, does this look infected to you?
tech: It kind of does, yeah.
nurse: Yeah, that looks like an infection. If that gets into your bloodstream, it will eat your dialysis access all up. It will probably lead to cepsis, and that means death.
me: *frown*
tech: oh that's not a happy face
nurse: Have you ever seen an infected access. It's horrible. It literally eats you alive from the inside.
me: So when are you going to tell me what I can do about this?
nurse: Well I'll call your vascular surgeon, and see what he says.
*wait*
nurse: Oh, it's late, and he's not answering. You should call him soon though. If an infection gets in your blood, well, you know. You probably need to get on antibiotics as soon as possible. They might want to do it IV.
me: So I should go to the ER?
nurse: Oh, it can probably wait until you talk to the doctor. Call him sometime tomorrow.

So I couldn't sleep that night, or the next. Every time I got a glimpse of that little yellow dot I could see it growing and pulsating, spreading it's gangrenous putrification into my veins, up my arm, slowly making it's way to my heart. I try not to worry about things much, because when I do, well, my mind kind of runs away with me.

I called the doctor the first thing in the morning. His assistant scheduled me to come in the next day (which was Wednesday). I couldn't sleep that night either. I was packing a bag, and getting the laptop ready - all the things I would normally do for a hospital stay. Mostly I played EQ2, and posted on SG to distract myself from the creeping fear that my arm was slowly rotting away as I typed.

So let me cut to the chase, because the rest of this story is just as boring as the beginning. It was nothing. A surface infection, the doctor said. It might as well have been a zit on my arm.

doctor: See all that scar tissue? It would take a while for an infection to tunnel through that. It's like armor.
me: So, what should I do?
doctor: Go home. Keep it clean. Keep an eye on it. Give me a call if you get a fever.

I left the hospital relieved. That didn't used to happen nearly often enough, now it happens almost every time I visit a doctor. Portland's been good to me.

Even though some of the nurses are still morons.