So I had big plans. We had a three day weekend a few weeks ago (I've lost track of the days since) and I really wanted to get a ton of stuff done on a friend's motorcyle. I need to do the work on my own time because he has already paid me with an old parts bike. A lot of the work is done already, I just need to do some electrical rewiring. Not really difficult, but time consuming.
Sunday, we went down to the local river to witness some baptisms, several missionary kids (MK's) and some PNG kids all got baptised that day. Because I have a high pain tolerance, usually wear shorts and just generally don't care much when I bump into sharp things, my legs are covered with scars and usually sprinkled with fresher cuts, welding burns or other wounds. If 8 inch high pygmies were a thing, I suppose one might suspect that I had blundered into a small raiding party of such individuals. At the baptism, I noticed that a number of flies were quite aggressively clustered around one of my leg wounds, and try as I might, I could not keep them away from it.
Monday, (the holiday), I woke up feeling fine and determined to get a lot done, but no. By 9:30 or so, I was feeling ill, by 11 I was vomiting, lost my appetite, feeling generally bad all over, and the wound the flies had been clustered around was clearly infected. Fast forward a couple days and nothing had changed, except that my right leg was all mottled red and clearly not right. The left leg was also affected, but not as badly at that point. Reluctantly, I agreed to go to the Clinic.
So Friday we went to the Clinic. Over the past 20 years, I have spent very little time at the clinic. I am generally healthy and generally find that my immune system is capable of handling quite a lot. But this one was different. Before long, the Clinic Staff had determined that I was suffering from cellulitis.
Cellulitis, for those who--like me-- may not know, is a bacterial skin infection. It is not at all uncommon here, where there are some particularly nasty strains of such bacteria. It enters though breaks in the skin and I could have gotten it anywhere, possibly at the baptism, or possibly from water splashed up onto my legs from riding through a mud puddle on the way to work (there have been days recently when I arrived to work with a thin layer of mud puddle mud on my legs from the knees down).
So! I had daily appointments at the clinic for probably 10 days in a row, where my condition was closely monitored, I was pumped full of anti-biotics by IV, injections and orally, blood work was done (my white blood cell count, which should normally be under 10,000, was all the way up to 19,000--numbers which meant nothing to me, but which certainly caught the attention of the clinic staff), my legs were carefully wrapped with bandages to protect them from further infection and also to deal with draining fluids.
If you are imagining something disgusting at this point, let me assure you, it was probably worse. I did not recognise my own legs, covered with weird blisters containing fluids of various unhealthy looking colors, rags of dead skin still clinging to living tissue underneath, swollen legs, swollen feet, (I had to take the laces out of my shoes in order to be able to wear them), and I was ordered to keep my feet elevated as much as possible, which has left me more or less bed ridden for a few weeks now.
I am pleased to report that things have improved a lot since those early days. Currently, I'm still supposed to be keeping my legs elevated, but the swelling has gone down, the fluids are mostly drained now, the dead skin has been carefully cut away, revealing nice, healthy new growth underneath, my white blood cell count has gone back down to 7200, my legs are still wrapped up, but the right one is almost reconisably my leg now and the left is following along pretty nicely, though still significantly behind the right. Still no word on when I will be able to return to work, but hopefully not more than a couple weeks from now.
Our dedicated nurses and Dr. at the Clinic have really been a blessing to our family during this time. We thank the Lord for sending these people!
Oh, and cellulitis is no fun, avoid it if you can.
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