Initially I stated this blog during the pandemic when we were living in our rv and traveling the country. Hard to believe that was 4 years ago already. Things change, time marches on, blah blah blah. Towards the end(?) of the pandemic I received my Portuguese residency. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between Portugal, the crashpad in my parents basement, work, and occasionally a vacation for a week or so in the rv. Most the time it’s hectic and crazy and it’s hard for me to plan where I will be a week or so in advance.
But because life is always interesting, last summer we were thrown a curveball. J had a spot on his leg that hadn’t healed and after two months I finally forced him to go to urgent care. They gave him antibiotics it got a little better, but he stopped taking them and it got worse. He went to his regular dr who gave him antibiotics and again got better, then worse. This went on most of the summer. Finally one doctor had the idea to do a scan which showed his knee replacement was infected (known as #pji) and #osteomyelitis.
At this point because it had been going on for months J ended up in the hospital for a few days, to start him on the correct antibiotics and meds and get more imaging done. J has never presented “normally” he doesn’t have any pain or loss of motion, just a constantly draining sinus. But thanks to that and the side effects from the anti-biotics it’s taken him out of work. I would be remiss if I didn’t state here how import std/ltd are if you are at a job that offers them, run don’t walk to sign up.
Anyways back to the diagnosis. After getting out of the hospital he went to visit the surgeon who did his knee replacement 8 years ago. Yep 8 years ago. Everyone assumes since it’s infected it was done recently…nope…just another fun mystery. While we were visiting the surgeon who was all in favor of immediately yanking the replacement out, he had us meet with the head of infectious disease who is/was amazing. He has been THE best part of all of this.
I cannot understate how important a good doctor is either. While his ortho guy is good, his infectious disease doctor is amazing and a life saver. He’s been very honest with us (though his local ID dr is even more brutally honest which is always appreciated). He also has floated out various other forms of “treatment.” Given the fact that the only oral antibiotic left that will work for J is what he is already taking, once he becomes resistant to that it's pic line time, and for how long does that last? His ID dr has given us idea’s in which direction to go which have taken us (literally) around the world.
No one really wants to do surgery since he is functioning so well, most of the time with joint infections and osteomyelitis you don’t get a choice and are forced into an immediate surgery. Which can be good and bad I supposed. In once sense the choice is made for you so there’s that. Suffice to say right now J is “stable” albeit bored and understandably anxious. For the time being we are in a holding pattern.
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