Not an easy phrase to say or spell. Not an easy recovery either.
Just before round 3 of chemo I woke up late at night with what at the time I thought was the worst pain imaginable in my right knee. We called the on-call oncologist who directed us the emergency room. I don’t have a lot of memories of this visit, but the medical records I can access in the hospital app show that I had an MRI and CT scan of my back. They sent me home with meds. I woke up a few hours later in morning in even more pain, which I didn’t think was possible. This time in my thigh and hip. I had a bruise on my hip this time. I was in so much pain I couldn’t walk, so we called 911.
At the hospital I remember a CT scan again and then a surgeon came in and gave us a diagnosis, necrotizing fasciitis – flesh eating bacteria. My options were an above the knee amputation or I could go home.
I know that seems like odd options, basically amputation or go home and die. But honestly they have to give the patient all the options and those were the only two. We quickly picked amputation and my last memory for almost a week was being moved down a hallway.
As an aside, I don’t know why they didn’t scan my knee – where the pain was – on my first visit. I sometimes wonder if my amputation would not have been as severe if it has been diagnosed hours earlier.
I woke up almost a week later. My right leg had been amputated, I had been medflighted down to Tufts Medical Center in Boston, where I had further surgery to remove more bacteria. My entire right leg had been removed as had a good portion of my right hip and backside.