Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Catching up

It has been a while since posting, my apologies.

Victoria came off the IV antibiotics and started on oral ones. To the tune of 16 pills a day. It turned out that she could not tolerate them all. We have, after talking with DrIV#2, stopped taking one of them - the 12 pill a day one that cost a ton. CJ and I have a source of antibiotics for the next decade....although they will expire long before that.

Cast changes have continued. WN was away for 2 changes and her nurse assistants did wound dressings but no cleaning/debrieding. It was good to get her back last Thursday. Our regular CT was out too so we had the first CT that did Victoria's cast do a couple. He did a fine job, but the casts were larger than in the past.

I will post a picture of the wound today - in this post. The size is 5 x 5 x 1.6cm deep. There is also now two places on the wound where the skin has attached to the underlying and new tissue. This is VERY good. Where Victoria was missing 12-13 cubic cms of tissue before, she is down to 1-1.5 cubic cm. The wound is almost completely filled in. Now comes the hard part of getting it to heal over.

Her heel is forever deformed. The bone is higher and moved a little to the left. Special shoes and at least a cane will be necessary in the future.

The last x-ray was reviewed by a radiologist. The bone shows no further damage and it is showing signs of re-mineralization. The bone is healing. Great news.

We will not see DrIV#2 until the end of the month. So things are into the long grind of healing.

We received the bill for the first 9 weeks - $42k. We have not heard back from the provider on the care program we applied for.

The PICC has been removed. That is the semi-permanent tube and connection for the IV and blood draws. The removal was quick and painless - although Victoria said she could feel it coming out. 44 cm of tube - it reminded me of the commercial on the Sci-Fi channel where the guy was pulling a hair and unthreading his body...

Her inflamatory numbers were stable, no real change after 2 weeks of the orals.

Next update will be near the end of the month after the next blood work and x-ray.