Hello,
I am new to the site. I am a 46 year old Canadian male who is in otherwise good health. In April of this year, I was walking my dog and I tripped over a piece of wood protruding from the ground. I ended up with a splinter in my right shin. I removed the splinter, dressed the wound, applied antiseptic and forgot about it. That was a Saturday. The following Wednesday, I started feeling deathly ill. I was sweating buckets, had waves of nausea and I thought I was coming down with the flu. I went home and found that I had a temp of 42C which is extremely high. The very thought of food made we want to vomit. I took some Tylenol and went to bed.
I woke up the next morning feeling just as bad but minus the fever. I struggled through going to work for two more days but could not eat a thing without being sick. By Friday, my leg was getting sore and my foot was throbbing. On Saturday, morning I woke up and the pain had spread from my foot to 6" above my knee. I kept taking Tylenol - the stupid guy that I am and did not equate the issues with my leg to my overall feeling of sickness.
Sunday morning I woke up and could not even bend my leg. It was swollen to twice it's normal size and was an angry red. I could not even get a shoe on my foot. My doctor runs a walk-in clinic and I finally went to see her. She took one look at me an send me to the ER.
They took me in right away and I was diagnosed with severe cellulitis of the leg that was on the verge of becoming full blown septicemia. My white blood cell count was off the charts and my C-Reactive Protein was 192 - normal is 0 to 4. The took all kinds of blood cultures and found that I had three separate strains of bacteria attacking me at once. They hooked me up to an IV and pumped me full of Vancomycin and Cipro for 10 days. My leg was blistering and draining so much that serous fluid was leaking through the skin and I had to have my dressings changed every hour because they were saturated.
After 10 days in the hospital, I was sent home with oral antibiotics and daily visits from a home care nurse to change dressings and things. I returned to work month later but still went every other day to the nursing clinic for care. I am mostly recovered now, but as a direct result of that severe life-threatening infection, I have developed Lympedema in my right leg. I have swelling and discolouration from my foot to the back of my leg above my knee. Compression stockings are helping and the doctor is looking into specialized physio/massage therapy to see if it would be of benefit. I get excruciating throbbing pain deep in that leg at night from time to time that keeps me awake but I am otherwise back to good health. Lucky and thankful to both have my leg still attached and to still be alive. I have learned my lesson about ignoring symptoms and hoping they will go away on their own!
Advice please re my 10 year old.
New fitted lymphodema glove.
Primary Lymphedema in 4 limbs & Venous Disease :(
Another fearful newbie
