An Interesting Weekend

Fun times that included seeing Terry off and two(!) trips to the emergency room at Troy Hospital.

First off, you know all that work I did last week? Well, some of it apparently came back to bite me in the left thigh. After my last post, I had terrible, rated 9 or 10, pain in the area directly above the knee and going 4 to 5 inches up. I was going to stick it out hoping things would improve since I didn't want Terry to do anything foolish and demand she stay home. But things didn't seem to improve during a near sleepless Friday night or at any time during Saturday. 

Terry left around 1 o'clock and by 5 I could stand the pain any more.I decided to see if a birding friend (Ken) who lives nearby could give me a ride over to the ER in Troy. I emailed him a request since I didn't have his phone number and he called me less than 10 minutes later. I explained my situation and asked for his assistance. He said he'd be glad to help out. 

Well, I got to the ER shortly after 6 pm and the doctor on call said that he thought it might be anything from a blood clot to a strain/partial tear of the quad. He was leaning toward the latter because there was not discoloration of the left foot. Unfortunately, there was no one who could do an ultrasound to determine which it was. He gave me some meds to fight any infection that might be present in the deep tissues and told me to come back in the morning.

Ken agreed to take me back on Sunday morning so I was good to go.

I got home around 10:30 and managed to get some sleep before Ken showed up at 7:30 Sunday morning for a return trip to the ER. This time, Ken came prepared and did some birding around the hospital grounds while I went to get my ultrasound done. He didn't do too badly as he spotted 13 or 14 species. I didn't do too badly either. The tech did elicit some stifled screams and visions of stars on my part when she had to press down on the tissues to get a good picture, but her work eliminated blood clots as a possibility.

The night shift doc was still there and he started talking about either a severe contusion or partial tear of the quad. (He eliminated a full tear because "your lower leg isn't flapping in the breeze.") I got the prescription for infection and a new one for pain from the day doc.

Ken took me to the CVS in Mansfield to get those meds and then delivered me home.

The pain meds warn about drowsiness and they aren't kidding. I took a nap from 5 til 7 and then went to bed around 10. (I needed to space the meds apart so forced myself to stay up.) I can't say I fell asleep immediately, but it was close. I didn't wake until 9 am. If the cats tried to get me up, I was unaware of that.

It's coming up on noon and 24 hours on these meds and I can say something is working. Whether it was the long sleep or the drugs, the pain has subsided considerably. I just booked a followup with my primary care for Tuesday afternoon. Hopefully I'll be able to tell her things are getting better and better.