Home from hospital. long road ahead....

I went home 2 days ago (in August) as the infectious disease docs thought with negative cultures including fungal that I had had enough IV antibiotics but with my alterred immune system would need another 10 days of oral antibiotics. Still with much pain when standing or walking, but no significant spread of inflammation at least of the skin area involved.Only a bit of redness at the edges. The central necrotic (dead) area has not increased and I noted a bit of discharge after a shower yesterday.

Two days before going home I finally understood why my leg hurts so much, an MRI showed "Inflammation and fluid collection in the subcutaneous tissues and posterior muscles in lower leg consistent with clinically suspected cellulits and myositis."  That was the first time the involvelment of calf muscles ie myositis was used. Not sure if my treatment team had suspected.that but they did note calf pain, previously having ruled out a deep vein thrombosis with an ultrasound.

I am to see my onco in 2 more days, and infectious disease in 1-2 weeks.  They held my Arzerra treatment again because, I think, I had continued neutropenia and the lesion basically blossomed after my last Arzerra treatment. I had my laptop in hosptial so did a PubMed search for necrotic cellulits and myositis due to Arzerra or Rituxan, and found nothing. So final working diagnosiss is cellulitis/myosits probably bacterial and secondary to inital trauma of unknown etiology.along with neutropenia.

I was distressed to hear from one of the nurses in casual conversaton that my primary onco, Dr T, is not at Hahnemann except rarely and is instead at a Cancer Treatment Center of America hospital in North Philly. I was never told this and along with not knowing I had neutropenai the week before admission I have decided to transfer all my onco care to U Penn even in the middle of this damn leg infection and the courses of Arzerra. I sent an email to the intake nurse asking to be plugged in there. We shall see.

Warning: I am going to show how bad my leg is but to spare those who don't want to bring up a recent meal, I'll start with a few silly photos....


Me on third day in hospital and whopping steroid dose in anticipation of gettng Arzerra (later canceled though) - corticosteroid euphoria:

 

A little help with the small bit of work I did while in hospital (note the Phanatuc was gift from one of the teams I work with...and the laptop was "kindly" brought to me by my fellow editors, so I could finish a project

 

 

 

 

 

AND NOW MY VERY DISGUSTING LOOKING LEG: