Zach's Blog [ Recovery Edition! ]

After nearing three weeks, since I was first informed I was experiencing iron deficiency anemia, after 8-10 back and forth calls between my nephrologist's office and BCH's infusion center/insurance team and subsequent denial: I'm resigned to the fact it's impossible to get my iron deficiency anemia addressed prior to this fifth surgery. I had been anemic and inflammatory most of last year. This is interfering with the healing (last reading was 6 and 5 is considered 'very low'). So I can only hope and pray I wake up from surgery since I'm losing blood through my drain and will lose even more blood in surgery. I'm brooding heavily with these thoughts and the thoughts of never getting through this. This is what happens when you subject a patient to 5 surgeries in 11 months... it starts to wear on a person. And one co-morbidity, the anemia is not being addressed. What's next, amputation? I just don't know what to believe in, anymore. Insurance are be...

Preface: I will include some silver lining, to what will otherwise be a post written in negative tone about the ongoings of what has brought us to this point. However,  I will state that this will go down as one of the worst days of my life (whether it translates fully manifested into reality, or not). My appointment with my leg specialist was prefaced with my own expectation that the visit would not go over well, interrogative on why I was switching infectious disease doctors. At the same time from talking with my Mom, she reframed it by adding some positivity of thinking (rather optimistically) that my leg specialist would have taken my side and agreed that my infectious disease doctor was negligent in her dismissiveness of this untreated e. coli and be upset about this situation to my benefit. Instead, I found that we met with the usual introductions when they came into the room. My limb specialist and her assistant came into the room. First on the agenda was looking at the leg....

Sorry for my last post. It was written where I was mentally down and felt dragged down by this whole ordeal. Since then a few things have happened that puts some light at the end of the tunnel and something tangibly to look forward to. To start, earlier last week my nephrologist called and we had spoken about getting me setup for some IV iron infusions. Up until now that has been a wash. I called and found out that BCH doesn't allow their assistants to enter in the orders and my actual nephrologist has to login to their portal and place the order. This means I should be receiving a call (or will call them tomorrow afternoon) to get setup for regular infusions. Hopefully this aids with the healing process. It would be great if it helped out with my energy issues (but in 2016, I noticed only a minor improvement from the ongoing CFS). Next, over the weekend, my drain switched from that serosanguineous colored fluid to purely blood there for a while. I called over the weekend to report...

 So this afternoon, I have switched from the serosanguineous amber-color discharge from my leg to purely blood. I called after-hours to my leg specialist, only once again to have my call returned by the most useless PA in their office that reads from the same script anytime I've called during the weekend with a concern and told to call back on Tuesday because apparently it's not an emergency. To provide a bit of background, the past 3-4 days I have been sleeping most of the day and night. I'm not sure how much of this is due my untreated anemia (recently my nephrologist called me stating it is getting low enough something must be done), drinking BulletProof Collagen powder with MCT (to supplement more protein and collagen into my diet), or my ongoing infection regimen and drainage from a segment of 2 cm that exposes my tibia bone to the outside on one side and skin on the other. In my mind, there has been very little follow-through on the point of my limb specialist, other ...

You would think in the past 10 days, I would have all sorts of news to report on. While I have a few updates to provide, it has been mostly in a state of "watch and wait" as far as my unhealed wound is concerned along with finishing out this antibiotic regimen, which looks like it will be early to mid-February until we enter the "cool down" period with the antibiotics and obtain cultures from leg aspirate. Basically the past couple weeks, in ~4 day intervals my leg specialist has asked for me to report on the output on my drain. It has been mostly consistent in producing 20-30 mLs of fluid within a 24 hour period. While that number is mostly consistent, I imagine when I measure this latest 24 hour period this afternoon it might be closer to 15 mL, while also reporting that the incision around my leg has not closed shut and still leaking (some). So I'm not sure if there is another surgery on the horizon for me, or if she will want me to drive down there today. I ...

Wow... it has been a while since I have journaled. The best place probably to start is with the Louisville evacuations that occurred last week. Dec 30th 2021: In the morning, I had an appointment with my new nephrologist. He was quick to point out my anemia and inflammatory markers from the infection. It was a good first impression with this specialist. Side note: fast forward to Jan 3rd, their office called to notify me I should start supplementing with iron due to the anemia, but my previous nephrologist decided to not treat it in Oct because apparently bacterial infections can feed on the the iron, and furthermore I think it is better treated with IV iron, rather than oral iron (had I had been treated in the past). When I got home, soon after I had a follow-up tele-health appointment with my infectious disease doctor. During this appointment, she rather abruptly notified me the cultures from my most recent surgery that I had an untreated e. coli. infection, in addition to the sta...