Friday, October 5, 2007

Joe's thorn to bear....


This thorn is what remained after spending almost two weeks in the bottom of Joe's foot. I recall seeing about that much taken out soon after the original incident. However, how it got there isn't nearly as interesting as the time since then. After Joe hobbled back to our friend's house, we removed what we thought was all of it then cleaned up with rubbing alcohol and put a bandage on his foot. Well, next day it didn't look much better and looked a bit infected. Much to Joe's protests, we drained the wound, a small piece of the thorn came out, and we re-bandaged it. It still didn't look very good after another 24 hours so we called the doctor. He looked at it, prescribed some antibiotics and did a staph culture since this happened during the wave of staph infections sweeping through Manhattan. Joe and I were leaving for California (will post more soon) the next day and we wouldn't know the culture results for two days. Rhonna could tell that the doctor really wanted to say that we couldn't leave town. We left anyway with our antibiotics, bandages, and high-powered antibiotic soap to wash the wound three times a day. Saturday came and Rhonna called to say the culture was negative (big sigh of relief). We had fun in LA, but the foot still wasn't getting better. Joe had is annual checkup scheduled for early in the week so, in spite of his otherwise excellent health, he still had a sore foot. The doctor scheduled a sonogram to look at the wound in case there was more thorn in the foot. The sonogram was inconclusive which is hard to believe considering later that same day we returned once again to the doctor to have her remove the piece shown in the picture. Good grief, just how far was that in the foot to take nearly 2 weeks before it began to come out? Well, Joe's just fine now and the sore foot never did seem to slow him down much, amazingly enough. The only issue now is his allergic contact dermatitis from the bandages the nurse used to cover his four immunization shots he received during his annual check-up. It looks like a combination between poison ivy and chicken pox. Nothing serious, but enough already!

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