Re: Doctor's in Florida/infection

[Guest guest]

You really have my sympathy on this one... I'm currently at home, with a spacer

in my hip,

being treated for infection. I had my hip taken out on 29 march. I was on IV

antibiotics for

a week, and now on two different oral ones. My veins were rebelling against the

IV, so had

to stop early, and my doc was wary of putting in a central or pic line and

keeping me long

term in hospital unless it was essential. I'll know if i have to switch back to

IV after my

next blood tests in a couple of weeks.

I have a staph infection (or, rather, a couple of staph infections: two

different strains of the

same bug) rather than strep. I'm assuming the original doctor had lab tests run

to see

which drugs your husband's specific infection reacted to in cultures, and will

be treating

him with those drugs. I'm lucky in that my surgeon has a great deal of

experience in this

area, and has a specialist microbiologist to work with.

Obviously, getting the infection clear and absolutely gone is essential before

putting the

knee back in. I've been told it could be three months, or even more until I get

another hip.

Though I might luck out and kill these more quickly. There will be regular blood

tests and

more drugs until I have completely normal ESR and CRP levels, and they will

probably do

another aspiration before thinking about another replacement. I'm struggling

with

managing with the spacer--it's nothing like recovering from a normal

replacement, where

you know all the work is helping to improve you--and I can't imagine how hard it

must be

for him to be unable to use his knee at all. The indeterminate wait is hard. I

was never

good at patience. But giving it enough time is the only thing that will mean I

have a chance

of keeping the next hip. Rushing now could lead to a reinfection.

Has your doctor explained what happens for your husband? If he is on IV

antibiotics, is he

in hospital or at home? Does he have to have regular liver or kidney function

tests? (I had

to, because of the toxicity of the particular drug I was on, but I know this is

not always the

case).

with very best wishes to you and him

> We have really been through hell with the Strep infection and the multiple

> surgeries that my husband, Everett has had. This week we went to see Dr. W

> Burke in Ft. Lauderdale. He really seemed at the top of his game.

It

> isn't so much about Everett getting a designer knee, the issue is how do you

> eradicate the infection. He is on a pic line using resefine(sp?), two

> courses of 6 weeks each. There's lots to tell but that the main situation as

we

> " stand " .