Urgent Care

It started with a red nose.  I woke up on Friday with a bulbous nose, red, tender and swollen.  Made the standard jokes about having an alcoholic nose and continued on with life as usual.

When I awoke Saturday morning this red rash had spread considerably.  It was alarming enough that even before making my bed I walked across the street to Urgent Care.  Good news was that it was an infection, bad news was that because it was on my face and spreading rapidly I would need IV antibiotics instead of the oral prescription I was hoping for.  Dang, how do I get myself to the hospital???

The *plan* for the weekend was that my mom was coming to get me on Sunday so I could be available when her partner has hip replacement surgery on Monday.  So with a quick change of plans they picked me up an hour later and we headed to the hospital.

It takes a lot for me to enter a hospital.  I don't have much faith in the traditional medical model and emergency rooms are the worst unless it is truly an emergency.  However, when I asked the nurse practitioner at Urgent Care what would happen if I didn't seek treatment, her response was "you could die".   Not a bad way to go, but it still had the desired effect and I once again entered the dreaded medical conveyor belt.

I slowly moved from waiting room to waiting room, getting blood work and even a cat scan.  I opted out of a tetanus shot but they were fairly persuasive regarding the cat scan.  The cat scan did rule out an abscess, but it was a totally bizarre experience and I voiced my concern that shooting iodine into your body can't be a good thing.


I spent five hours in the emergency room, mostly waiting, and was so happy to have my mom and Dan to spend the time with me.  I was not allowed to eat or drink and towards the end I was starting to get a bit irritable.  I was sent home with oral antibiotics with strict instructions to return to the hospital for IV antibiotics if the redness or swelling increased.  The diagnosis was facial cellulitis.

So here I sit at my mom's with a particularly nasty looking face and taking oral antibiotics.  Dan has been taking pictures so we can objectively review the status of my face which is a good thing because I can hardly stand to look at myself in the mirror.  It will take a lot to get me back to the hospital.

And tomorrow we go to a different hospital to begin the waiting game all over again but this time it will be Dan instead of me.