But it sure felt infected
October 29, 2009
I came to the hospital yesterday because I was dissolving into a screaming mess. (What's the problem, Tucker? Isn't that your natural state?) Hey, who's doing the talking here? Much as I was confident I had not torn my ACL when I had that incident in Seattle due to everyone telling me my knee felt secure, I was confident that my knee was not infected Tom Brady style because my physical therapist said it wasn't red and pussing so it wasn't infected. But something was clearly amiss, because it was getting more and more swollen and hot and stiff, and I was crawling around my house scared to stand up cause it hurt to, and generally behaving strangely. So I call my doctor all panicked-style, and they say come in, we'll see you today, and so I blow off work to do that.
They aspirate (that's a big doctor word, I bet Pooja and A-Tong and Cara know what it means. It means "drain") some fluid from my knee, and since I've had this done once before I am surprised by the color: yellow. Last time it was red and clear (anyone around for the Copehagen balloon knee? TT was.), but then again, last time it was infected, so maybe yellow is good? The doctor is surprised, too, and that's never good, although he seems to be concerned not by the yellow color so much as the viscocity.
He wastes no time. I'm like -- second opinion? and my words echo as he simultaneously: sends knee fluid to the lab, sends me with a lab request sheet marked STAT to get blood work and all that jazz, and admittance paperwork done in remote reaches of the hospital. I got a wheelchair, and Joe along with an amazing nurse named Janet from Jamaica, who sent her peeps from other floors to look after me as I made my way through the system, treated me royally. I heard my name echoing across intercoms as departments awaited my arrival. Man I felt like a VIP.
I'd arrived at the doctor's office around 2 pm; by 6 pm I was experiencing deja vu (even had the same admitting nurse from a month ago) as I got wheeled into the fucking operating room. Doc re-opens my knee at the incision sites and flushes it with water. It's cloudy in there, he says, but everything's intact. In other words, the infection didn't eat the ACL graft, which is the worst case scenario.
Stayed the night, now they have to flush it again today at 6 pm. If it looks clearer in there, then they send me home Friday morning, and for the next 6 weeks I'll have an IV stub in my arm (or leg? Not sure) and a nurse will come to my house and teach me how to hook myself up to an antibiotic drip (they're all: it'll be very discreet. No one will know you have an IV. I'm like, I want EVERYONE to know!), then they come every week to give me a new bag. Right now, they're trying to "grow a bug" out of the fluids they took out of my knee so they know what the bacteria is, and what antibiotic to use.
I'm going into surgery at 6 pm and should be out of here first thing Friday morning, and my weirdo family members keep marching in here, so thank you for wanting to visit me but I'm not even going to tell you where I am. Get to the point, Tucker! How will this affect your recovery? Will you be ready to play next season? I refer you back to Tom Brady. He was back a season later (and his surgery was more serious), and he's four and two at the moment. Yes, it will delay things a bit, but I feel like a thousand times better than I did yesterday.
And I leave you with a funny anecdote... When I came in yesterday, my blood pressure was high because I was running a fever and whatnot. As I slept here at the hospital last night, post-operatively (so the infection had been mostly flushed) around 5 am a nurse snuck in and stuck a thermometer thing in my ear and a blood pressure sleeve on my arm. A few minutes later, another nurse runs in with a bag of IV fluid, wakes me, asks: can i see the ceiling? Am I dizzy? She basically thinks I'm dying.
I'm like, yeah lady, I'm fine! I was just sleeping nicely. Can you let me return to that? But no, now it's other nurses, doctors -- who finally cause my blood pressure to rise enough to satisfy them that I am not drifting into the afterlife. Then just a little bit ago (after repeated readings all day), a doc comes in and says, are you a runner or something? I'm like -- close enough, yeah, sure. He's like, okay, then we won't worry about the low blood pressure anymore. Cool.
Friday, January 22, 2010
105 fever, puffy face
"She doesn't normally look like that, right?" - ER nurse
November, 2009
It was another raging Friday night in the suburbs. I plugged myself into my IV antibiotic and Joe and I settled down to watch "Rebecca," the creepy Alfred Hitchcock movie. After the drug had entered my bloodstream, my skin started to crawl. It added to the effect of the movie, which wasn't really very scary at all. Then I started getting cold, so I hunkered way down inside my sub-zero sleeping bag. Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier were reunited, their mansion burnt down, the movie ended. My teeth were chattering.
Joe and I relocated to bed. For all the effectiveness of Joe's attempts to warm me up, he might have been a metal spoon instead of a human one. I was quaking. It was the best workout I've ever gotten. My muscles felt like they were going to pull if I shivered once more, but for hours and hours, shiver I would. I took benadryll. I smoked weed. Joe led me through a meditation, focusing on the floating letters "s-l-e-e-p". Finally, I was able to take one deep uninterrupted breath, then another. I fell asleep. Glory glory.
When I woke up in the morning, I was spent, but elated. I had slept. I could lie comfortably in bed for as long as I wanted and sleep more. It was Saturday. But ain't no rest for the weary... it was 9 a.m., time to dose again. I called my doctor to ask him if I should really put more of that that shit in my body. Yes, he said, dose again.
A little background: On Thurday, my doc had switched me from the antibiotic I'd been on since the surgery (Vancomycin, for you doctor types) to a new less toxic antibiotic (Cefazolin). Both would kill the staph in my knee. I took the Cefazolin on Thursday, and on Friday I woke up with a rash on my arms and legs and stomach. So my doc put me back on the Vancomycin, assuming I was allergic to the Cefazolin. It was a fair assumption, given the information at hand -- but one that would prove inaccurate. In fact, I'd had a delayed allergic reaction to the Vancomycin, which he had just instructed me to take again. So I lay on the bed next to the ball of Vancomycin, watching it shrivel as its contents mingled with my bloodstream through the line in my arm, and thought, what a strange form for an enemy to take! I will beat you, you plastic little enemy. I got that same tingling on my skin as I had the night before, but my memory is short, and I 'd forgotten that that's the way it all began last time. For a few minutes, the tingling seemed to be the extent of it. I did a victory dance. It was, of course, premature. Back on the couch, the first wave of shivers hit. I tried evasive maneuvers, such as 1) walking around and 2) pretending nothing was wrong, but eventually I found myself back in defensive position: hunkered down in the bottom of my sleeping bag, rocked by spasms of shivering.
Joe went to the drug store to get a thermometer: 104. He shook it, tested his own temperature, tested mine again. 104.2. Hospital? he asks. Nah, I'd sleep it off. Hours later: 104.8. Face, hands, feet puffy. Vision blurry. Bump bump bump in the Jeep to Nyack Hospital. Can you make it to New York Hospital? Joe asks. They're affiliated with the Hospital for Special Surgery, which has all my charts and doctors. Yeah, I can make it.
Bump bump bump to New York Hospital. We park where the ambulances park, to the chagrine of the security guard. I follow Joe and his backpack down the hallway through which they bring the stretchers from the ambulance. It's like crutching totally wasted, something I have plenty of experience doing. Foot, crutch, crutch, foot, crutch, foot, crutch, foot and crutch... the ER waiting room looks like the DMV. They give me a mask for my face because I have a temperature, and say I have to put it on. I tell Joe I hate it here, everyone's completely incompetent, and I want to go back home. He says no. I fall into a half-sleep over the armrest of a seat til it's time to be seen.
They give me ice packs for under my armpits, wheel me off on a stretcher and park me under an EXIT sign where various machines are beeping at different rates. The ice packs get warm. It appears they may have forgotten about us. A doctor comes over, balding, aggressive. He asks what happened. His tone is somehow accusatory. At this point, it's a long history and I might die before I get through it. I ask him if I can get some benadryll first, and then I'll regale him.
He says, "Benadryll is not going to do ANYthing for you at this point. You're FEBRILE. I think you might be SEPTIC. Maybe you have REDMAN syndrome, but that would have gone away after a few hours. There's no WAY you should be feeling... SO UNCOMFORTABLE, SEVEN HOURS after dosing." He is not being helpful. "You're young," he says. "You have this [makes a face and gestures wildly toward my lower body with his hands] NASTY infection going on. THen you've got all this [makes face and gestures toward my upper body/head] OTHER stuff happening. We DO NOT want to mess this up."
"Well," I say sadly and dramatically to Joe, after the doctor has stormed off, "I was born here, and it looks like I'm going to die here." But then a wonderfully normal and sane young nurse named Sarah comes over to my forgotten corner underneath the EXIT sign, draws many test tubes of blood, hooks me up to a Benadryll drip, a Pepsid drip, and some fluids. I feel immediately, drastically better, and so I do what I always do when I start to feel better and ask for food. She wheels me into a little enclave and brings me tray upon tray of (dry looking, but hey) lasagna, fish, sandwiches.
They keep me overnight, which is okay by me because a Saturday night on the ER promises drunk old ladies who hit their heads and don't know who they are -- and delivers. A parade of docs visits, but now I'm fine! Still, they think my fever is somehow related to the infection -- either the staph in my knee or some new infection in my blood -- but I know it was all just an allergic reaction to the Vancomycin.
They are unconvinced. They want to x-ray my chest to make sure it's not pneumonia. I fight them off on that. They want to take out the IV line that they surgically implanted through my arm into a vein near my heart because they think maybe there's bacteria attached to the plastic. I am firm. I tell them if I run a fever again, then they can take it out, they can x-ray my chest, they can have my firstborn child. Meanwhile, I keep on requesting Benadryll (so I don't run a fever again). They don' t want to give it to me so I tell them my hands and feet are still puffy, which is somewhat true.
The next day, we bust out of there. They wanted me in til Monday, but we capitalized on poor communication between shifts, took what the defense gave us, acted real confident, and told them we were ready to be released. And so, 24 hours later, we are listening to Abbey Road and peeling out of the city with the windows down.
So what does this all mean, Tucker? I mean, does this affect your recovery? I mean, I hardly even care anymore! Die or get better -- stop pussyfooting around! Just this: I am maybe a month behind on my recovery at this point. Today was my first day off crutches. I'm on a completely different antibiotic, unrelated to either of the two I was on before. But more importantly, I didn't bite it on a stretcher under the EXIT sign. Everything else is a TOTAL BONUS! Now, colors look brighter. Even the blue of the exercise balls at physical therapy is bluer, I swear. Problems are humorous. The fact that you guys all exist out there, that's all icing on the cake. It's one big hilarious movie and goddamn am I glad the reel's still running!
November, 2009
It was another raging Friday night in the suburbs. I plugged myself into my IV antibiotic and Joe and I settled down to watch "Rebecca," the creepy Alfred Hitchcock movie. After the drug had entered my bloodstream, my skin started to crawl. It added to the effect of the movie, which wasn't really very scary at all. Then I started getting cold, so I hunkered way down inside my sub-zero sleeping bag. Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier were reunited, their mansion burnt down, the movie ended. My teeth were chattering.
Joe and I relocated to bed. For all the effectiveness of Joe's attempts to warm me up, he might have been a metal spoon instead of a human one. I was quaking. It was the best workout I've ever gotten. My muscles felt like they were going to pull if I shivered once more, but for hours and hours, shiver I would. I took benadryll. I smoked weed. Joe led me through a meditation, focusing on the floating letters "s-l-e-e-p". Finally, I was able to take one deep uninterrupted breath, then another. I fell asleep. Glory glory.
When I woke up in the morning, I was spent, but elated. I had slept. I could lie comfortably in bed for as long as I wanted and sleep more. It was Saturday. But ain't no rest for the weary... it was 9 a.m., time to dose again. I called my doctor to ask him if I should really put more of that that shit in my body. Yes, he said, dose again.
A little background: On Thurday, my doc had switched me from the antibiotic I'd been on since the surgery (Vancomycin, for you doctor types) to a new less toxic antibiotic (Cefazolin). Both would kill the staph in my knee. I took the Cefazolin on Thursday, and on Friday I woke up with a rash on my arms and legs and stomach. So my doc put me back on the Vancomycin, assuming I was allergic to the Cefazolin. It was a fair assumption, given the information at hand -- but one that would prove inaccurate. In fact, I'd had a delayed allergic reaction to the Vancomycin, which he had just instructed me to take again. So I lay on the bed next to the ball of Vancomycin, watching it shrivel as its contents mingled with my bloodstream through the line in my arm, and thought, what a strange form for an enemy to take! I will beat you, you plastic little enemy. I got that same tingling on my skin as I had the night before, but my memory is short, and I 'd forgotten that that's the way it all began last time. For a few minutes, the tingling seemed to be the extent of it. I did a victory dance. It was, of course, premature. Back on the couch, the first wave of shivers hit. I tried evasive maneuvers, such as 1) walking around and 2) pretending nothing was wrong, but eventually I found myself back in defensive position: hunkered down in the bottom of my sleeping bag, rocked by spasms of shivering.
Joe went to the drug store to get a thermometer: 104. He shook it, tested his own temperature, tested mine again. 104.2. Hospital? he asks. Nah, I'd sleep it off. Hours later: 104.8. Face, hands, feet puffy. Vision blurry. Bump bump bump in the Jeep to Nyack Hospital. Can you make it to New York Hospital? Joe asks. They're affiliated with the Hospital for Special Surgery, which has all my charts and doctors. Yeah, I can make it.
Bump bump bump to New York Hospital. We park where the ambulances park, to the chagrine of the security guard. I follow Joe and his backpack down the hallway through which they bring the stretchers from the ambulance. It's like crutching totally wasted, something I have plenty of experience doing. Foot, crutch, crutch, foot, crutch, foot, crutch, foot and crutch... the ER waiting room looks like the DMV. They give me a mask for my face because I have a temperature, and say I have to put it on. I tell Joe I hate it here, everyone's completely incompetent, and I want to go back home. He says no. I fall into a half-sleep over the armrest of a seat til it's time to be seen.
They give me ice packs for under my armpits, wheel me off on a stretcher and park me under an EXIT sign where various machines are beeping at different rates. The ice packs get warm. It appears they may have forgotten about us. A doctor comes over, balding, aggressive. He asks what happened. His tone is somehow accusatory. At this point, it's a long history and I might die before I get through it. I ask him if I can get some benadryll first, and then I'll regale him.
He says, "Benadryll is not going to do ANYthing for you at this point. You're FEBRILE. I think you might be SEPTIC. Maybe you have REDMAN syndrome, but that would have gone away after a few hours. There's no WAY you should be feeling... SO UNCOMFORTABLE, SEVEN HOURS after dosing." He is not being helpful. "You're young," he says. "You have this [makes a face and gestures wildly toward my lower body with his hands] NASTY infection going on. THen you've got all this [makes face and gestures toward my upper body/head] OTHER stuff happening. We DO NOT want to mess this up."
"Well," I say sadly and dramatically to Joe, after the doctor has stormed off, "I was born here, and it looks like I'm going to die here." But then a wonderfully normal and sane young nurse named Sarah comes over to my forgotten corner underneath the EXIT sign, draws many test tubes of blood, hooks me up to a Benadryll drip, a Pepsid drip, and some fluids. I feel immediately, drastically better, and so I do what I always do when I start to feel better and ask for food. She wheels me into a little enclave and brings me tray upon tray of (dry looking, but hey) lasagna, fish, sandwiches.
They keep me overnight, which is okay by me because a Saturday night on the ER promises drunk old ladies who hit their heads and don't know who they are -- and delivers. A parade of docs visits, but now I'm fine! Still, they think my fever is somehow related to the infection -- either the staph in my knee or some new infection in my blood -- but I know it was all just an allergic reaction to the Vancomycin.
They are unconvinced. They want to x-ray my chest to make sure it's not pneumonia. I fight them off on that. They want to take out the IV line that they surgically implanted through my arm into a vein near my heart because they think maybe there's bacteria attached to the plastic. I am firm. I tell them if I run a fever again, then they can take it out, they can x-ray my chest, they can have my firstborn child. Meanwhile, I keep on requesting Benadryll (so I don't run a fever again). They don' t want to give it to me so I tell them my hands and feet are still puffy, which is somewhat true.
The next day, we bust out of there. They wanted me in til Monday, but we capitalized on poor communication between shifts, took what the defense gave us, acted real confident, and told them we were ready to be released. And so, 24 hours later, we are listening to Abbey Road and peeling out of the city with the windows down.
So what does this all mean, Tucker? I mean, does this affect your recovery? I mean, I hardly even care anymore! Die or get better -- stop pussyfooting around! Just this: I am maybe a month behind on my recovery at this point. Today was my first day off crutches. I'm on a completely different antibiotic, unrelated to either of the two I was on before. But more importantly, I didn't bite it on a stretcher under the EXIT sign. Everything else is a TOTAL BONUS! Now, colors look brighter. Even the blue of the exercise balls at physical therapy is bluer, I swear. Problems are humorous. The fact that you guys all exist out there, that's all icing on the cake. It's one big hilarious movie and goddamn am I glad the reel's still running!
Thursday, December 24, 2009
You tore my ACL to mop-ends
I take it back: it's not okayAugust - October, 2009
I writhed in the grass, teeth tearing clumps of grass in pain. My knee was torn, my season over faster than you can say “dime a dozen.” I hoped it wasn’t true, but how many times had I witnessed this scene?
As the golf cart buggied me to the medical tent, fellow Ultimate players gawked. Tucker, you? I thought you were indestructible! I shrugged ruefully. I thought so too. My body, built like a boy’s, is not elegant or gazelle-like as I sometimes wish when I pass the Victoria’s Secret display window, but I have always appreciated its ability to hit the ground hard and not feel a thing until next day’s shower when the water hits the raw wound, yellow from many re-openings.
But this hit I hadn’t seen coming. I had stopped short for a high floaty disc when my trailing defender crashed into me from behind. One teammate said she “climbed up you like you were a tree,” which I can’t quite visualize, but suddenly my knee was ripping as my leg bent sideways faster than my body could fall.
The play was blatantly illegal. You'd never know it, but Ultimate is meant to be a non-contact sport, and the only way number 18 on the Canadian team Traffic had a play on that disc was if my body had turned out to be ectoplasmic. After the game, she apologized. It’s okay, I said, you were just playing hard defense. That was back when hope (aka denial) sprung eternal: it was the meniscus; it was just a strain. It definitely wasn’t a ruptured ACL, since I hadn’t heard that definitive pop (or had I? Who listens when they're gearing up to scream?). Three surgeries, one staph infection, one life-threatening allergic reaction later, can I take it back? You tore my ACL to mop-ends, and it’s not okay.
My surgeon, Dr. Andrew Pearle, came highly recommended, like all the surgeons at the Hospital for Special Surgery. You can tell by the way people nod approvingly – “ah, H.S.S.” – it’s the Ivy League of hospitals. Educate yourself if it floats your boat, but no matter how much or little you know about how your leg-bone will be re-attached to your knee-bone, once you’ve entered the hospital there is nothing you can do to influence the outcome of your surgery. Sure, go ahead and say a beseeching thank you to the operating room nurses before you drift off into aneasthetized death-sleep. What you really mean, of course, is please. Please let the surgeon have had a good night’s sleep. Please let the nurse have thrice-washed her hands. Please don’t let the superbugs bite.
When I emerged from that realm between life and death that Michael Jackson so enjoyed, the surgeon’s words had already sunk in: the surgery was a success. Two weeks later I was walking sans crutches.
At my follow-up my surgeon showed me the dozens of pictures his surgical team had taken of the inside of my knee. Save for the occasional smattering of blood, it was all glowing and snow white, just like the blubber of a dead whale, if you’ve seen the Planet Earth DVD. He said I had excellent tissue, about which I allowed myself to feel smug. Now my healthy body was back in control, nature was taking its course. No more unknowable drugs through IV drips, no more slicing, dicing or arthro-scoping.
Those scrolling digital pictures did not show everything. There was no sign of the microscopic Staphylococcus epidermidis bacteria that had made their way from someone’s skin – possibly my own – into the deep recesses of my knee during the surgery, where they were quietly and cozily reproducing.
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