A Tough Couple Weeks

It has been two weeks since our last blog post and it has been a tough couple of weeks at least for Gary.  After blogging about the death of our nephew, Gary was able to secure airline tickets and a rental car to travel to Indiana even though it was the week before Thanksgiving.  The prices were actually very reasonable especially for last-minute travel but they did involve three airports both ways.  There just wasn’t enough time to make the arrangements for both of us to be able to go so I stayed behind and tended to the fort.

Gary said the funeral home estimated 1,100 people came through during the 6 hours of visitation.  Peter was a widely known and respected individual.  There was also a full house for the funeral at the church for the celebration of Peter’s life.

For the visitation and the funeral, Gary broke out the hard soled shoes that he hadn’t worn for two years and are virtually brand new.  He had a bit of sore foot after the first day of standing.  After the second day’s funeral, he could no longer put full weight on his right foot and had to limp to finish out the day.  When he woke up on the third day, he not only had a sore foot, but laryngitis which was a forerunner of quite a head cold to come.  When I picked him up in Orlando after his day of limping through a car rental return and three airports with the first day of a cold, he came up to the car and reported, “I am a mess.”

Thursday I had to drive up to the clubhouse for us to attend the Thanksgiving potluck as he could not have walked that far.  At least cold pills and an ankle wrap allowed us to enjoy a very nice dinner with tons of good food with several fellow RVers here in the Park.

 

 

The foot was somewhat worse by Friday as was the cold too.  By Saturday it had swollen up and turned red and I had to break out the crutches we had in the basement of the motor home for just such an occurrence.  Monday morning we headed off the the walk-in clinic.  (One of the down sides of being full time RVers and being a thousand miles from one’s primary care physician is that you have little choice but to find some urgent care facility where you don’t know quite what quality of care you will receive.)  The physician’s assistant that we saw gave her diagnosis of a blood clot and sent us next door to labs at the hospital for an ultrasound telling us that as soon as they confirmed the clot Gary would be admitted for five days of clot dissolving IV’s.  Gary was seriously lamenting that his lifelong streak of never having been admitted to a hospital was coming to an end.  But the ultrasound of his leg saved him – there was no blood clot.

The clinic strongly suggested that Gary head to the ER which he was somewhat resisting until the “you don’t want to risk your leg” was thrown out.  So off to the ER we went.  Their diagnosis was an infected foot and they gave Gary an injection of antibiotics and a course of antibiotic pills and four and half hours after arriving at the hospital we were out the door.

Two days later, the foot was definitely worse.  It was swelling more with the swelling starting to move up the leg and it was redder as well – just the conditions they told us to come back for if they happened.  Gary asked what the uric acid test had indicated at the last visit.  After some checking, they told him they hadn’t done that.  But this time they did only to come back and say it was above the normal range and that an acute case of gout was likely the culprit.  After another four and a half hours, he left with another prescription and this one seems to be working.  The swelling is going down and the week of crutches is no longer necessary.  And the cold has just about run its course as well.