Reply #51: I've been there myself and it sucked [View All]

[gkhouston]

I had a PICC line (intravenous IV) when I was doing the Vancomycin, so I got out of the hospital after the abscess surgery when they were sure I wasn't going to do the septic shock thing. Nice thing about the PICC line was that I could do the every-12-hours drugs at home. The not-nice thing was that the friggin' PICC line, which is really just some thin plastic tubing, didn't want to come out of my arm when the 10 days was up so I ended up going to the emergency room and waiting around forever. Their big technical solution? An amazing tug-of-war, with, I guess, the right facilities to deal with the problem if they'd yanked my vein right out of my arm.

And the killer of all of this? I originally got colonized during a routine breast biopsy (benign). So first I had an infection in the biopsy incision and my upper arm, treated with oral antibiotics, and four months later it came back in another part of the same breast, so strongly than I had to have a second surgery. So much for my career as an exotic dancer. ;-)

I'll be thinking positive thoughts for you and your battle in this round with the ugly MRSA monster. You've licked it before, you can do it again. But oh, what a pain in the veins!!