bo rushed to emergency room because... (Full Version)

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CynthiaWVirginia -> bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 1:27:41 PM)

Several months back bo had penile implant surgery, the kind with the fluid. It went wrong, the pump part of the device came out of his abdomen and required another surgery to put in a new one.

At over three weeks past his last surgery, we thought we were out of the woods. Finally.

Two and a half weeks ago he picked up "jock itch from hell", a huge rash all over his upper thighs and scrotum. He blamed it on the heat and inability to wear underwear while he was healing, went to his local doctor and got prescription medicine for it, some cream he rubs into it.

Other than this, and swelling from the surgery site (a cut over his pubic bone that looks a lot like my own cesarean scar)...he was fine. Yesterday when he walked to his mother's, by the time he came back home, the site he had had surgery at last time was very swelled up and he was in pain. Today when he described his symptoms to his surgeon's office they said it sounds like he's infected.

How the heck can a healed surgery site, almost a month after the surgery, get infected? There were no open wounds, his skin had healed nicely. They had removed all of his genital piercings before his surgery...if it had been through those, why would it have taken two days shy of a month to finally get infected? Did that jock itch come from some germ he picked up at the hospital? (My sister's husband picked up some fungus germ that antibiotics couldn't do a thing to and he almost lost his foot. The man was NOT diabetic and had had no foot injury.)

He woke me up to give me a brief call. I was asleep from having stayed up all night to be able to take my seventysomething year old mother and her cat to a vet in the next town over. Her new furbaby is having surgery (spayed) and is to be picked up somewhere around five o'clock. There is nobody else who can do this for her. No public transportation that would allow a cat in a cage. A taxi cab would be over $60. I have to do this for my mom.

I don't even know which hospital he will be at, other than it's in Charleston and they sent him to a different hospital. He said they will give him some antibiotics in IV's and will knock him out because of the intense pain (he's a screamer, bless him). He said that he was told that if they cannot get this under control they will give him surgery to completely remove the device and keep trying to get rid of the infection.

I was with him that week after the prior surgery and made sure he followed his surgeon's instructions in every way shape or form. I have no idea how all of this happened, what to expect, anything. I'm supposed to drive to him tomorrow.

By tonight I might be half hallucinating from sleep deprivation (I'm a terrible insomniac and am only good at sleeping from five or seven a.m. until two or four in the afternoon...and even then I wake up many times in the night if/when I can sleep). Taking mom's cat to the vet meant that I didn't go down for a nap until 10 a.m. Maybe I managed to catch three hours of interrupted sleep before bo phoned. (I'm 49, and after all the lymphoma wars I went through, I don't even feel human unless I've had nine hours of sleep.)

I. Cannot. Go. Back. To. Sleep.

I will try to find out where he is. He thinks he won't be able to let me know this info before they knock him out, keeping him in some emergency room until a bed finally is available.

He didn't resume shaving his genitals until the surgeon said it was okay to. He avoided the scar. When his jock itch wasn't responding well to the prescription ointment, he stopped shaving so that his skin wouldn't have mild razor burn in places.

How in the world did this happen, that a place where someone had surgery, the inside, not the outside scar area, can get infected almost a month after the surgery? Did his jock itch ick burrow through his skin somehow and somehow cause these problems? (He hasn't had genital fungus in over forty years.)

How long will they do the antibiotics drip? How long till we know if it's working? If an infection won't die with antibiotics, how can taking a closed implant out help the infection go away or go away faster? (I could understand if my portacath got infected; the infection would keep going into my bloodstream and I know there would be no other choice other than to take it out.)

I don't know who to talk with at the hospital.

What if this stuff doesn't respond to any antibiotics? Is he going to die on me. Right now I'm too upset to think straight. To stay with him longer, it would be better if I didn't go to his home until he was coming home from the hospital. Going there and waiting in an empty house for a week then having to go home on the day he's coming home won't be helpful. There would be nobody at home to take care of him.

I just need to have some idea of what to expect so I can handle this better. It's a 3-4 hour drive and I can only do one trip before August 1st, next payday, so I have to make it count.

Mom phoned, they are letting the cat leave earlier than I expected. Got to go. I'll check in here and in my mailbox before trying to go to bed again. I'm debating whether to take some sleep aid (diphenhydramine, sp?) so I would be up to driving in the early morning hours, arriving early tomorrow at the hospital, or just waiting and driving out late tomorrow night, arriving at the hospital Friday morning. Or if they need to do surgery and wait till he's out of the woods infection wise...to pick him up and take him home.

Sorry for the incoherence. My mind is in a thousand different directions. I cannot even start looking for his hospital until I'm back from picking up mom and taking her to pick up her kitty from the vet. I hope her cat...doesn't develop problems after surgery or else I'll really be screwed. My mother might wind herself up tight enough to have a heart attack if I couldn't drop everything, race back, and rescue her and her kitten.

I've been praying that this IV thing will work and that everything will be okay.




DesFIP -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 1:46:22 PM)

Don't drive tonight. Sleep instead. It sounds like he's going to be in for a while, either getting the infection under control with IV antibiotics or with surgery.

Wait until you know he's due home. If he has to stay four more hours while you drive so be it.

Take a deep breath and get some sleep.

And my best wishes, for him to get better quick.



SeekingTrinity -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 2:15:06 PM)

Sleep! You'll not be able to do Bo any good if you get in a wreck on your way to him because you are exhausted. He is in the best possible place he can be right now and they are going to do everything they can to help him. It's bound to be scary as hell right now for you, but give the antibiotics time to work. If you can, talk to him over the phone and let him know you are thinking of him. He's going to be sedated soon, so he will be calm, peaceful, and not feeling pain once that happens. Let his body and the medicine do their thing. Get some rest (aided if you need it), so you can think clearly and be on top of your game. Get there when you can, but get there safe.

Good thoughts and prayers for Bo to have a speedy recovery



kiwisub12 -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 4:38:53 PM)

Implants of any type can get infected at any time. And once there is an infection around it, it won't heal until the implant is taken out. I work in urology surgery , and having had patients come in with similar problems, I know they can get quite sick. Not dying sick, but feeling horrible sick.

One of my docs told me that usually they take the implant out, wash the site vigorously with antibiotic solutions and put another one back in. I queried this, because I couldn't see how it would heal if it was already infected, but they assured me that it did just fine. We did have one that the pus ran out while I was prepping it (yes, I have a glamorous job [8|]) and that one we just took out the implant and sewed him up.

When you get to the hospital, talk to the urologist and he should be able to answer any of your questions. In fact, write them down so you don't forget what you wanted to ask. Anyway, if you have any questions that I can answer , shoot me a cmail.



littlewonder -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 6:10:54 PM)

Yeah, even if healed from the surgery on the outside, doesn't mean the inside is healed. It can take much longer than a month to completely heal. It may looked healed but isn't. Plus the implant can cause an infection at any time, even years down the road.

When I had my liposuction surgery, I may have looked healed after a month but in reality I didn't heal for many, many months. Even after 6 months I would still have some swelling if I pushed myself too long and too hard.

They will keep him on the antibiotic drip until they feel the infection is gone. If it doesn't go away within a couple of days or so, they will probably want to remove the implant and then go back on the antibiotic drip for a few more days until they feel he is ready to go home.

I'm betting he'll be completely fine. Most people do respond to either the antibiotics or implant removal.



angelikaJ -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 7:04:25 PM)

(((hugs)))



Toysinbabeland -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 7:08:07 PM)

Have they considered that the implant may be being rejected?
Or that something like a foreign body (a sponge, etc) could be the culprit?


Eta:
My thoughts and prayers are with you both, for safe healing and continued health.



Rawni -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 7:23:02 PM)

My thoughts and prayers are with you both Cynthia. I am so sorry this is happening and hope you will find the strength to get through all that you both must.

HUGS!



Kana -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 7:27:01 PM)

Hugs and prayers jetting your way pronto
Best of luck



CynthiaWVirginia -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 7:48:31 PM)

Thank you. Reading this when I got home from bringing mom's kitten home from the vet helped me hold it together while I started phoning hospitals. I had no idea there were so very many in the Charleston area. bo was supposed to phone me, or have someone phone me, but he wasn't up to it. I kept imagining him driving himself there (takes a good hour and maybe twenty minutes) and having a car crash. I almost phoned the police first to see if they had scraped him off the road. Six hours with no word on where he was or if he was safe got me very upset.

I finally reached where he was staying and rang the phone in his room. Yes, he drove himself.

He's hooked up to all kinds of tubes and they've run an MRI to confirm he has an infection at the implant site in his abdomen. I don't know if the antibiotics are working and are what broke his fever, or if it was the Tylenol or whatever.

Y'all are right, he's feeling no pain. He said soon after he arrived the IV's started and they gave him something that made him sleepy.

His surgeon told him that they will check his blood either tonight or tomorrow to see how the infection is doing. If the antibiotics are not handling it, the surgeon says he will remove the entire implant. Period. (I wish we lived in Alabama and had a different surgeon.) He won't wash out the area and put it back in. bo's insurance has already told him it will not pay for another surgery to put it back in so soon. If ever.

As things are, before this current problem, the co-pay on his past two surgeries are adding up to around $10,000. Now we have to add another hospital stay, an MRI, and probably another surgery to the bill. (Three surgeries, all for NOTHING.) With his debt (he's making payments) to the hospital that high, even if we switched from Humana after another year to something else, I don't even know if the hospital would allow it. (Probably will say he's in too much debt already from the other three surgeries.)

It was good to hear his voice.

His daughter doesn't even know he's in the hospital and I've asked him to remember to phone her tomorrow. I don't know if even his mother knows yet. The hospital is not allowing him to drink anything tonight and have given him laxative pills, getting him ready for surgery tomorrow if they decide he has to have it. On my own, I have no way of phoning her if something goes wrong. If he has to have surgery, I cannot drive both my minivan and his truck to his home. I'll need to be able to pick her up, take her to the hospital with me and drive his truck home. Maybe drive him home too, because he is very heat sensitive due to his past brain injury and my minivan has no AC. His truck does.

I am so tired. Am eating my second meal of the day, 14 hours after my first meal of four boiled eggs and some tart cherry juice. It was a very hot day and I'm trying to re-hydrate. I'm going to try to sleep after I stay up long enough to drink another two glasses of fluids. My knees didn't get the rest they needed to recover from yesterday's spring cleaning and if I had to drive tonight, upon arrival and while trying to get out of the car...I'd probably need a walker so that I wouldn't do a face splat on some hard pavement. I'm crying "Uncle" and will try to be reasonable and stay home for another day or two. If I can't sleep, at least I can be lying down, resting my body if nothing else.

After the first surgery, when the pump blew out of his abdominal (?) wall and they were telling him they might have to remove the entire device (it comes in three parts), he almost broke up with me. Said that he was just an "old, broken down, used up coal miner" and that I should find someone better. I don't know how I'm going to deal with his depression, and my own, if he has to endure another surgery.

Btw, I've had an implant (that Portacath I mentioned earlier. It's to help them give me chemos without burning out my veins) for 12 years now without one single problem arising from it. Not even when I "forgot" to get my heparin shots for seven months straight. Not even when the hospital had some f*d up needles that punched through my skin but wouldn't penetrate the implant. (After three needles, I told the nurse to please do what I used to do at the veterinary clinic when I was cleaning old needles for the autoclave...I tested the needle tip by running cotton over it. If it snagged, I tossed it out.) After several more tries with cotton, we found a good one and she used it, lol.

I've also had metal plates and screws put into my right leg, an "implant" of sorts...? I've never had any infections or problems with it. It's unfair that bo's had two bad things happen from this one surgery he was supposed to have.

I meant to go over to Fet to add bo onto a prayer list but I think I'm losing coherence again. Sleep dep is making the room kinda do a soft tumble, and like the mysteries of the world can be solved by staring at this postage stamp on an envelope in front of me. (I hope I don't completely devolve into sheer babbling.)

Again, thank you DesFip, SeekingTrinity, and kiwisub12. You've helped a lot and I appreciate it. (Sorry if anyone else posted afterward, because I've been typing this for well over an hour now and am too tired to read more tonight.)




lizi -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/24/2013 7:48:35 PM)

So sorry Cynthia that your partner is going through such an awful thing. Hope that you get good news soon.



PeonForHer -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/25/2013 11:13:10 AM)

Cynthia, I hope this gets sorted out soonest. Good luck to Bo and to you.



CynthiaWVirginia -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/25/2013 4:27:29 PM)

Thank you, littlewonder, angelikaJ, Toysinbabeland, Rawni, Kana, lizi, and Peon. He phoned me to say that the antibiotics are working at this moment, that his blood work is showing some improvement. If this continues they will leave the implant in.

If not, the surgeon said it will definitely come out...and...added that if they have to remove it, some tube or something will shrink and they will be unable to put one back in later, even if his insurance gives the green light. (He would have zero orgasms for the rest of his life.)

His cell phone minutes are all used up, but a nurse let him use some cell or cordless phone to phone me to let me know. He needed me to phone his daughter to let her know about his phone, give her the name of the hospital he's at, as well as his room number. Told me that his daughter would handle going to her grandmother's house, to put her daily pills in the slider bar zip lock bags I bought to help her stay more "independent".

bo usually makes up a week's worth at a time and she had just used up her last day's bagged doses. (His mom has poor vision and cannot read the instructions on the bottles. Some of her pills are for diabetes.) I don't have to drive down there to take care of her meds myself, yay!

He's still in the hospital and I have no idea what's going to happen next, nor when.

For some reason I feel very calm, like I'm in the eye of a storm where it's all quiet and peaceful. The s*** might hit the fan tonight or tomorrow...but at least I can mentally/emotionally rest up for it today.

What also helped to wind me up is that while I was taking mom home from taking her cat to the vet, I was pulled over by two police cars. I had stopped, then made a turn at a stop light, nothing more, in the daytime...and my left brake light was burnt out... I was lucky and was given just a written warning for the brake light, AND for leaving the handicapped placard hanging from the rear view mirror. (I've had it there for about two years without a single problem, and everybody else leaves theirs hanging up 24/7 in my area, but apparently this is illegal.) With my PTSD, cop cars with lights swirling, and/or policemen walking toward me have the power to trigger a panic attack. Once I start on one, it's kinda like eating potato chips...I can't just have one...nooooooo...I have to have at least a dozen more that day.

*Grateful hugs to all who posted*




kiwisub12 -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/26/2013 1:32:50 PM)

Cynthia, my docs told me that if they have to take out the implants and let it heal, that the next implant won't be as long. The tubes you are talking about scar closed, and won't open as well the next time around. The point is, is that my docs say that implants can be replaced, with loss of length.

If when he gets out, and if he has had to have his implant removed, he might try another urologist in another group. One thing I would do, is to call the hospital and ask to talk to someone in the OR, and ask who they would use for this procedure. There are always options.



CynthiaWVirginia -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/26/2013 3:00:56 PM)

Thanks, kiwisub12, for giving me something else to work with. I can do as you suggested. (At least it will give me SOME power to do something instead of feeling so, pardon the word, impotent.)

bo phoned twice today. His daughter brought him his phone recharger and took care of her grandma's checkbook. It's a grand thing when adult (so okay, 20 to 21 year old) children finally step up to bat to do something for their family rather than always...expecting the good with no family duties attached. (She's starting to grow up and it makes me smile. Am proud of her.)

I had told him what was said in this thread, about how another urologist surgeon might handle this and that maybe we need to get a consultation or plain ole switch surgeons if this thing has to come out. His surgeon changed gears, and instead of just the gloom and doom where it's very likely to have to come out, and no to putting in another one during the same surgical time...now he's saying he would do this. (Yay to whoever in this thread mentioned that this was possible!) To be fair to the surgeon, I must keep in mind that bo is very upset and might be filtering out 90% of what they have been telling him. Still, I'm glad this came up here so that we had a chance to talk with the surgeon about it, even if it was "again" and bo couldn't process it the first time.

They might be letting him go home on Sunday, if his blood is okay. He's still on IV antibiotics and they will be sending him home with antibiotics for a week or two or so. He said the infection could still come back when the antibiotics are finished and we might be right back in the same boat again, but next time surgery would be needed. If all goes well, I'll be driving up to see him on Sunday, if/when he comes home from the hospital.

He's very swelled up over his pubic bone, and he's upset that all of these recent surgeries have made him put on a lot of weight. Ah, my vain little darling must indeed be doing better. [:D]



DesFIP -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/27/2013 2:36:28 PM)

Good news. Here's hoping he gets out and heals fine this time.



Discocurious -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/27/2013 5:04:00 PM)

Wishing you and your loved ones all the best from the UK.



hlen5 -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/28/2013 2:26:42 PM)

Sending bo good wishes and hope he made it home today!



CynthiaWVirginia -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/28/2013 9:17:38 PM)

Thank you, DesFIP, Discocurious, and hlen5. :)

Yes, bo was allowed to leave his hospital bed earlier today and went home. He's on oral antibiotics and has about a 50/50 chance, the surgeon said, of the infection flaring back up in the next few weeks and the implant having to come out. The glass is half full, yay, and not empty.

I'm glad he's at home. :)

No fever, but he's had chills. It's made him "walk on eggshells".

I'm going to start my drive in an hour or two, unless the wind starts howling again. On the toll road, a strong wind hitting the side of my minivan feels like a giant has just whacked my vehicle three feet to the left or right. Ugh.

I'll try to cuddle him up and not do anything ebil.



kalikshama -> RE: bo rushed to emergency room because... (7/29/2013 6:41:27 PM)

quote:

How long will they do the antibiotics drip? How long till we know if it's working?


You may already know the answer to this, but when I needed IV antibiotics after being bitten by a Brown recluse Spider, the red lines of infection and other symptoms started diminishing after the first or second day.

{{{{{{{{{{ HUGS }}}}}}}}}}



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