On the 2nd of March I went to bed with a sore knee and the following day couldn’t put any weight on it, so I lurched around the house grasping the back of an office chair (fitted wth bigger easy-rolling single castors) while I collected the bare minimum needed for a short stay in hospital. I just needed a way to get there, I made an emergency call requesting ambulance service and was told my case wasn’t urgent enough to warrant taking a paramedic vehicle out of service. But they did call for a taxi and pay the $48 fare to the nearest emergency department. 30 hours later I was transferred to a bigger hospital for further treatment and/or surgery.
The surgical team then dicked around for over four more days while my condition worsened before performing keyhole surgery to drain a bacterial infection and flush the knee joint with antiseptic. For the next month I was having IV antibiotics every six hours. Cannulas used for IV purposes need to be changed every three days and I was running out of places in both arms to hook one up effectively. The answer was to run a PICC line through a vein in my upper arm terminating just above my heart (evidence at last that I seem to have a heart), with the dressing to be changed once per week. Unlike a cannula, a PICC line (Peripherally inserted central catheter) can be used to take blood samples for pathology tests.
My condition is oddly called Septic Arthritis even though it’s neither related to sepsis nor arthritis. The surgeons explained I had copped a “quadruple whammy” the septic arthritis, gout, pseudogout and the existing osteoarthritis. Pseudogout has the same symptoms as gout but the crystals deposited in the joint are calcium rather than uric acid.
At this major hospital I was lucky to see a physiotherapist every second day. When told I could go home (which wasn’t based on any discernible logic that I could envisage) I mentioned I had private health insurance with a fund that had a special arrangement with a rehab hospital some 8 km away. Suffice to say that when a bed became available there I was transferred asap. Here we get two physiotherapy gym sessions on weekdays and one daily on weekends. The hospital has been undergoing renovations and they had progressed in the ward I was in to a stage where there was a danger to the safety of patients so yesterday I was transferred to another room in another ward, this time a single room so I’m no longer bothered by others in the room falling asleep with the TV volume up loud or other cohabiting issues like bathroom access.
My planned discharge date is April 20th, I need to be able to “walk” using a rollator walker at least 50 metres. Yesterday I estimate I went around 110 metres in total, including 80 m back the the room from the gym. This took about 20 minutes and required 5 rest stops but I managed it. Today I’ll be starting in a different gym, there are several in this rehab establishment.
The occupational therapist will refer me to a Government run aged care program which can provide help with shopping, transportation for medical reasons, home maintenance, garden maintenance and modifications to my dwelling to make it easier and safer to manage my condition until no longer required. I’ll also be referred to a local rehab clinic and have a range of in home exercises to perform.
It’s goig to be an interesting and likely a long recovery. I’m not managing the stress and pain terribly well at present.