Sorry about not continuing my posts about vacation but I've been busy trying to heal again. Huge blisters formed on both of my legs where some of the worst sunburn can be found. Blisters plus heat and redness equal something I used to joke about: second degree sunburn. I used to joke about it because I wasn't sure it was possible. Could the sun truly deliver a second degree burn?
It was either Tuesday or Wednesday when I woke up to a sight that scared the heck out of me. There was a giant blister on my right leg the size of an egg yolk. It's a strange description but I don't want to be accused of exaggerating. It isn't the size of an entire egg in or out of the shell but it is the size of the yolk from that egg. It's a very similar color as well which is what scared me the most. We all know that yellow is the color of infection and this blister is/was a sickening yellow.
The good news is that it drains completely clear. The yellow is just an optical illusion from looking through the skin. It's full of lymph and not pus. (Lymph is the liquid component of blood.) That's the good news. The other side of it is that I've been "lymphing" steadily enough to soak through all sorts of bandages. Melissa refers to it as weeping but I think that "lymphing" is more fun. She has all her medical books and loves her medical site on the 'net. I prefer my personal experience and the advice of doctors since I've had such a wide variety of what I'll call medical experience. It's a good thing that Melissa told me that lymph is actually slightly yellow from the white blood cells in it. The bandage she removed looked a lot like an aging newspaper so I'd have been looking for infection again.
It's silly of me to worry so much but I hate hospitals beyond reason. I know this and I will admit it is unreasonable as long as I'm not in a hospital at the time. I get the twitches just from visiting someone else in there. Years ago, I had a bad staph infection (which is flesh eating bacteria in the technical sense but not some awful thing from the jungle - it's the same thing that causes strep throat) that didn't respond to antibiotics for a few days as they went up the scale in "power." I don't even remember how to spell the name of the super-bug that was going around at the time but it was pronounced MERSA. That diagnosis got tossed around a bit but I don't know if I ever got it applied to me.
What I do know is that I had a crack on the bottom of my right foot. It was just very dry skin to the point of bleeding a little. On the very day that I broke down and treated it, I woke up with this band of angry red on my leg. If anything touched this band including moving air, I just about hit the ceiling from pain despite my Chiari related pain tolerance. The skin was so tight from swelling that moving the leg also made me want to hit the ceiling. I was freezing cold (in summer) and all I wanted to do was sleep so it was obvious that I had a fever. That was an infection.
This is a little bit of pain with sudden spikes if a cat decides to jump up to visit me and takes the normally safe route across my leg to my lap. Poor Maddie was in my lap but moved onto my left leg for some reason. I startled her so badly that she landed heavily on the (more seriously burned) right leg and tried to stay there for balance. I screamed at her and dumped her off to the floor. Since then, she seems to have learned where to avoid touching me.
The pain has subsided some so I am left with two major issues. One is the fear of an infection landing me in the hospital where I would have to put up with such humiliations as nurses deciding when I do and don't need medication. I've been taking my own medication to some degree or another since I was four. That's something that the pain doc can help by writing my pain scripts for more than I will take. Instead of five breakthrough pills each day whenever I choose to take them, it is one or two every four hours up to a maximum of five.
The diabetes situation is worse. They expect me to eat institutional quality food to start with but the "special diets" take all the remaining flavor away. In every technical sense, they are doing the right thing by forcing me to eat right but how can they expect me to have any sense of morale if they take away my only dependable pleasure in life? As a famous person once wrote, "You don't actually live longer. It just seems like it." Therefore, I will go to great lengths in order to avoid hospitals.
The other non-hypothetical issue facing me is the healing process. I had notions of taking great leaps forward with morning walks, showers and coffee followed by writing productivity. Instead, I have been indoors constantly fearing both getting more sunburn and getting my wounds dirty. Instead of the physical activity and the effects of being outdoors allowing me to sleep well each night, I'm sleeping every other day/night so far. If I'm lucky, the insomnia won't get any worse.
I'm trying to follow the old Chiarian mantra. "Be gentle with yourself."
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