Cellulitis, tra-la-la

Somewhere around Wednesday of camp I got bit by something. My best guess is it was a spider of some sort, but I noticed a slight pain in my ankle if I bumped it. There was no redness, no bite mark that I could see, and no itching or swelling, just the feeling like I had a bruise if you pressed the spot. Two days went by and no change in that condition. Friday night (ok Saturday morning at 4.15 when I was finally done filling photo orders) I headed down the hall to my room and had to limp the whole way coz I was suddenly in ridiculous amounts of pain in the same ankle. I got to my room and checked it out in the light and it was completely swollen and bright red. It was burning hot to the touch and severe pain even just laying down. I took a couple of benadryl and elevated it overnight then let the camp nurse look at it in the morning at breakfast. Her diagnosis was to go to the doctor when I got home coz it looked like a nasty infection. After some debate with my mum I finally caved and we stopped in at the ER on the way home. Turned out I had cellulitis and had I waited til monday to come in things could have been very very bad. I spent about 5 hours in the ER on the 4th, then they let me go under the condition I'd come home in the morning to have it re-checked (usually they admit people right away for this but they believed me when I said I'd stay off it... the fact that I looked like I hadn't slept in a week probably helped my case). So skip to next morning - Happy birthday me! I had breakfast, then mum and I headed back to ER before church. Aaaand the infection had spread. Stellar. So I got to spend the rest of my birthday at Troy Beaumont. I hung out in the ER for about another 6 hours until they admitted me and brought me up to a room. The ER staff was awesome though, they brought me a birthday treat, made party hats and streamers out of cast gauze and everything.

Once I got into a room I had a pretty steady stream of visitors to keep me company. Austin came and spent some time with me reading comics and chatting. He even went down to the cafeteria to bring me french fries :o) I decided that IVs suck a whole lot, especially when they're in my hand. I didn't sleep very well because for a place of rest and healing hospitals are loud and annoying. There was a man somewhere on my floor (I was actually in the infectious diseases ward!) who was pretty sure he was going to die and spent almost all night screaming. It wasn't until mid morning that a nurse finally settled him down or hooked him up with some pain meds or something, but by then I only had a half hour to try sleeping until they woke ME up for another IV. An hour later my docotor woke me up to take a look at my chart, my ankle and to send me home. All in all it was good times... in that I never want to do this again kind of way! So there's your update on Rachel's life part 2... next time: Death and Kentucky... :oP