Thursday, July 5, 2007

Strep infection...

Anyone ever had one in your blood??? Beware -- it's VERY serious....

Clyde, my sister's husband, went to the doctor on Monday evening with a fever, chills, aches, and a hot red spot on his leg. The doctor sent him home and told him that most likely it was the flu...

This morning, my mom saw them at the Independence Day festivities in Waukee, and she noticed Clyde's leg right away. She asked him if she could feel it and when she did it was *very* hot and had a red line running from the lesion (which was below the knee) all the way up his leg. She told Laurie to get him to the hospital ASAP. They went to the walk-in clinic and as soon as the doctor saw his leg, he called down to the hospital and admitted him immediately. It was a strep infection in his blood, and the doctors (both at the walk-in clinic and at the hospital) told him that left untreated, he most likely would have been dead within 48 hours. The infection was creeping up toward his heart. Talk about scary!!

So depending on how he reacts to the antibiotics, he'll be in the hospital anywhere from 3 days (minimum) to a week or more. Hopefully, he's out by the weekend. Thoughts and prayers with you, buddy.

Matt and I spent a good chunk of the morning detailing my car. We took out all of the kids' stuff, vacuumed it out really well, and washed every inch of the interior. Hopefully we don't have to trade it in, but at this point, NOTHING would surprise me with that car. Matt took it for a drive last night, and when he tried to accelerate, the check engine light started flashing at him. UUUUGH! So tomorrow, since I have no wheels, we're swimming at home. The pool is out and ready!!

Tonight we went over to Thompson's for a BBQ and then to the fireworks display. Tina filled water balloons for the kids and they were all soaking wet within seconds. It was perfect, since it was over 90* in their backyard at 7 pm tonight. I failed to bring my camera, but since we were all packed in Matt's Camry, there really wasn't room! LOL!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. Ok, this is freaky. On Friday, Jeff spent most of the day doing yardwork. Saturday morning, we went to our friends to swim for the day. Around 4PM, we went to grab a bite to eat and I looked at Jeff from across the table. He was shivering and he was sweating at the same time. He definitely had a fever. When we got home, his temperature was 102 degrees. He took tylenol for the fever and spent most of the night in that state. The next morning, he gets out of bed and I heard him yell when he stepped down. I asked him what was wrong and he said his leg felt like someone kicked him in the shin. He goes out to sit in the lazyboy and watch a movie and I immediately noticed his leg was so red, really hot to the touch, and it was so swolen that it was stretched and "shiny" like he'd been bitten by something. He waited until Monday to go to the doctor and the doctor said he had an infection under the skin. It was either a spider bite or an infection from doing yardwork - sometimes leaves can scrape the skin un-noticed? Anyway, antiobiotics taken oraly didn't help. So he had to go back for a giant (not exaggerating) shot. Jeff said it hurt so bad and twice he thought they were done shooting it in and the nurse said twice, still have some more left to go in! OMG! So anyway, it took a week before the infection was gone and about 10 days for all the swelling to go down. I wonder if they had this at the same time? WIERD!

Anonymous said...

You know what else? Your car does suck and it's time to ASK JEFF FOR SOME HELP. It's the two step program guys. "Hi, my name is Matt." "HI MATT." "I need a new car." "Hi, my name is Ann." "HI ANN." "I need a new car that is big enough to meet my needs as a mom but doesn't look like a mom mobile."

Really. Seriously. IT'S TIME! Trade it in. Get an american made car so that if something goes wrong it's not $4K to fix it. Ok?

Anonymous said...

I'll spell it out for you...
C H R Y S L E R
D O D G E