So while everybody else was stuffing their faces with wedding cake the other night, we came back here:
Jeremy began having severe pain in his ankle Saturday afternoon but was determined to see Eden get married. I told him I’d take him to the ceremony, but as soon as the bride kissed the groom, we were going back to the ER. We left the kids at the reception with Papa and took off to the nearest hospital to find out why, after limping on it for 5 days, he suddenly couldn’t move it or touch it without intense pain.
The doctor gave us many reasons for why he thought this would happen, but there weren’t a lot of definite answers. The one thing he knew for sure is that Jeremy needed more serious antibiotics than what he had been taking at home, so he admitted him in the early hours of Sunday morning.
They put him on an IV drip of antibiotics and did a CT scan of his leg. There were no doctors there until today so we hung out in his hospital bed and watched stupid movies on the comedy channel together. It was actually quite enjoyable.
The doctor came in this morning and looked at the scan. He saw something that concerned him and so he called in a surgeon for a 2nd opinion. Turns out the spot in question was just severe bruising and nothing that needed to be removed. (Thank goodness!)
At that point we got the okay to be discharged after his last dose of antibiotics around 3 pm. It was lunch time so I asked the nurse if I could take him for a walk outside in a wheelchair while we waited. She said, “Sure” and the 2 of us tried to get him comfortable.
But as soon as his leg was lowered below his heart, the pain was intolerable. He sat in the chair 10 minutes thinking it would get better. It never did. By the time we got him back in bed, he was exhausted. I stood there staring at him with tears in my eyes. “How am I going to get you home and in bed? It’s a 45 minute drive. That was only 10 minutes and it was awful. What are we going to do?”
The nurse called the doctor back in and told him what happened. He poked around Jeremy’s ankle some more and agreed that he should stay. The only problem was, the hospital where we were, was not contracted with our insurance company and if he stayed there, we would be paying 100% of the costs.
So we had to move to another hospital right across town. The doctor here told us the best guess as to what is causing the pain is something called Compartment Syndrome, being made worse by the infection. He told us to plan on being her at least 2 more days.
We were supposed to leave yesterday for Orlando for a much needed vacation, but it looks like I’ll be spending my week bed-side instead of pool-side. Eating cafeteria food instead of seafood. Freezing my hiney off in this 60 degree icebox instead of tanning my skin in a beach chair.
But don’t worry. I’m not bitter.
