The Winter of My Discontent – Part 2

After discovering that I had a rather serious infection I went to the emergency room. The doctor there didn’t seem to think that the infection was too serious, despite the fact that some of my skin had turned black. He merely sent me home with a prescription for an antibiotic.  What I did not know then was that a whole series of events was about to unfold that would have some very serious consequences. 

I went home and began to take the antibiotics.  The next day I went to see my family doctor and he too thought that the infection was not bad enough to warrant a stay in the hospital.  I was doubtful of his opinion but decided to go home anyway and tried to suffer through with just the antibiotics.  Another four days was spent trying to get over the infection.  In the mean time I had completely lost my appetite and was unable to sit down because of the inflammation in my rear end. Likewise, a very foul odor began to emanate from the infection site.   I wanted all of this to just go away.  However, it did not and by Saturday I was back off to the emergency room.

Finally, things had gotten bad enough that the physician who was on-call in the emergency room stood up and took notice.  An infection that had started from one little pressure sore on my butt had now tunneled its way into my groin area and into other parts of my body.

It was not long before I was wheeled into surgery where a surgeon removed a large portion of necrotic tissue from the left side of my rear end. Later the surgeon informed me that I had three different types of bacteria that had ravaged my body. Fortunately, the doctor was able to remove all of the infected tissue. After surgery I spent a week in the hospital surrounded by characters that seemed to be ripped from the pages of a Stephen King novel.