h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Maggot Therapy! Yeah!

Well, there is more to say about me, after all. Call it backstory.

A couple of years ago I wrote a diary at dailyKos.com about what it was like to come down with the disease, which you can read here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/01/922351/-Kosability-How-I-Developed-a-Congenital-Condition

The last thing I remember about my home was how all my cats bounded for cover when the EMS crew wheeled the stretcher noisily through my front door. I was being taken to the local hospital in Ruidoso because my Medicare insurance provider would not pay for more than one week of consecutive daily visits by a home health nurse, but, yes, they would pay for the more expensive alternative. Hospital via ambulance. I had a running-away kit all packed for over a year because of the wildfire risk in Lincoln County, so I added a couple extra tee shirts, my netbook and kindle, and off I was borne. I expected to be back in Lincoln after no more than a few weeks. This was February 8, 2012.

After three days I was gurneyed into another ambulance and transferred to Specialty Hospital in Albuquerque, a 25-bed facility specializing in wound treatment. A pair of pressure sores near my coccyx had become infected and got to stage IV, complete with exposed bone. At Specialty I was isolated for 3 days until I was guaranteed free of MRSA, and to let all the other antibiotics settle out of my system, after which I was given a picc line* and moved to a semi-private room occupied by an extremely ill woman and her extended family. I slept a lot, collecting sleep that had been increasingly hard to come by at home. I was subjected to Spanish television and can now converse at length on the quality of acting and makeup in Mexican and Brazilian soap operas. Let's just say that, if it were up to Central and South American studios, Avon would be a major world power.

I begged for and got maggot therapy after Alvin, the lead tech, told me about how he uses them to clean the dead stuff out of wounds (debridement). The therapy was aborted after the first night when an over-vigorous repositioning of my torso by the aides tore the dressing and the maggots got loose. I had already named most of them (only a couple dozen are applied to a wound, to debride it -- Alvin showed me the container -- and then they are removed and destroyed after four days). There was Millicent Maggot, and Maurice Maggot, and Morton and Magdalena and Maria and Mike and so forth and so on. And now they were making a break for it, like some outtake episode of Toy Story. "Come on, Manny, you can't stop now! If we don't make it across this floor we only got four days to live and you'll never wear those wings!"

I was fed well (double protein intake for healing), treated attentively, paid my sleep debt in most part, typed one-handed into the netbook, monitored my home and cats via friend/neighbors, and tried to handle the whole experience as an adventure.

They took me to an outpatient mammogram clinic, an huge and ugly shopfront place with a warren of little rooms behind, all exposed pipes and ducting high overhead. It was a mammogram factory. They did not love me, lying there on my stretcher. This so-called medical facility had no place to maneuver a stretcher and no-one with the strength or knowledge to get me off the ambulance stretcher and into a wheelchair. They so regretfully denied me a mammogram. I bet they held stock in Avon.

They took me to a Temple of Imaging. Associated with University of New Mexico Hospital, it's a separate building with cathedral-like ceilings, wooden beams that suspend enormous planters, and a number of MRI machines, a PET scan unit, and cat-footed technicians administering to the whole.

They took me to UNM Hospital for a biopsy, having noticed anomalous bright patches in the MRI and also to check for evidence of osteomyelitis (bone infection, a big deal). There was a fear of cancer, unfounded as it turned out. It was a strenuous day that I hardly remember because I was on ativan for the first part, and under general anesthesia for the rest. And then the next day I was told that I was being moved to a rehab facility. Good news! I was no longer sick enough to remain at Specialty.

It was March 15, 2012, and I was now being taken to Ladera Nursing/Rehab Facility, Albuquerque.


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*peripherally inserted central catheter: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripherally_inserted_central_catheter unless you're squeamish

[Amy P]

It takes a rare talent to make this stuff funny. The wonder is that this isn't fiction but your life.

You are fast becoming my hero, hope you don't mind, I promise not to stalk you or ask for autographs.

I remember expecting and hoping, for months, that you'd get back home once again.

Asteroid Lil, but I can't stop my fingers using this smiley.

I'm struggling just to read all the journals this month so haven't read your diary, but it's only being saved for a quieter time. I'm going to try to save it to my kindle so I can read at my leisure.

Deb

Still reading and still amazed it's been so long.