After months of delay, including
an unexpected diagnosis of MDS, G has finally gotten a new knee. On March 4th, G had a total knee replacement. Surgery was successful. The MDS complicated the process somewhat
causing G to need a blood transfusion before being discharged from the hospital,
but on the fourth day, G was discharged, and we (including our dog) temporarily moved in with our good
friends Kirk and Joan.
G’s home physical therapist is
Anastasia, a wonderful Greek woman who we have become quite fond of. Her European inflection sounds so similar to
my late grandparents’ Slovakian accent that she feels nearly like family and reminds me of how much they are missed.
G now has one perfectly straight leg and one bowed leg.
By the tenth day, G felt ready to go
home, and we returned to our 5th wheel.
This is Anastasia’s first experience giving home therapy to a patient
living in an RV. She comes three days a
week and has predictably fallen under Duncan the Westie’s spell. On arrival, Anastasia first greets the Westie,
“I’ve been waiting all day to see you!” she exclaims before turning her
attention to her patient.
PT has been going well. G can bend up to 117 degrees. On March 15th, the staples were removed, and
the swelling was gradually reducing.
However, a small hole in the incision opened and began to seep
blood. G’s orthopaedic surgeon cleaned
off the bloody scab and inserted a swab into the hole. The hole was quite deep, and he was able to
turn the swab in a 360 degree circle deep under the skin. There appeared to be a small cavern with a reservoir
of blood lying below the surface preventing full healing. Although there were no signs or symptoms of
infection, G’s doctor decided to reopen the incision for exploration and
irrigation. Any infection would travel
to the new joint which would require a subsequent surgery with a new knee replacement
joint device. No thank you!
On April 1st (April Fool’s Day) G
was back in the hospital for the “suspected infection.” His incision was reopened, explored and
irrigated. Cultures were taken, and the
incision was left open, packed and bandaged.
The open wound is 10 cm long, 4 cm wide and 1 cm deep. Surgery took about an hour, and I took G home
the same day. I drove the short drive
home and pulled into the driveway.
We didn't notice that G’s wound had hemorrhaged during the trip until we went to get out of the truck. His bandaging was blood soaked right through, blood was
dripping down his leg, and a pool of blood had gathered at his feet on the
truck floor mat.
We had never seen this much blood
before and were both completely undone by the sight of it. G put pressure on the wound, and I drove him
to the ER. G left a trail of blood from
the ER door to the front desk and to the seating area. Nurses brought a towel and leak proof pad to
place beneath his elevated leg. G used
the towel to form a soft tourniquet around his leg. A janitor was summoned to mop up the
floor. G turned to me and said, "My life has turned into a dumpster fire."
When G finally got taken back to
a bed, the nurses cut off the bloody bandaging, and we got our first look at
the gapping, packed wound. The sight of
it gave me shivers. The packing was left
in place, the wound rebandaged, and we eventually went home. This is
not an April Fool’s Day story!
Physical therapy has been
suspended while the wound is healing. A
home nurse comes three times per week to repack and bandage the wound. The good news is that the cultures came back
negative; no infection present. G had no chemo during the month of March, and
all chemo has been suspended until his wound heals. A blood draw today revealed that his counts
are slowly dropping. It’s now a race
between the healing of his wound and the dropping of his blood counts. Tick tock, tick tock.
