Medical woes

At the moment I have so many different meds in me I rattle when I walk.  I'm almost at the stage of opening up my own pharmacy.
Wrongdiagnosis,com should pay me.  I could be rich my now.
On the 7th January I had lipofilling injected into my left breast.  That should be where the story ends.  One week back in Tanzania I had a large abscess and very swollen lymph nodes in my left armpit.  I dutifully went to see the GP down the road.  This was his last chance after cocking up so badly the previous year, that I ended up going into septic shock and lost my breast implant.  He said it wasn't an abscess but folliculitis and that I should squeeze it morning and night to get the gunk out.  He also said I didn't need antibiotics for folliculitis.  I asked him if he was sure as my lipofilling surgery had just been three weeks previously.  He said definitely no antibiotics needed.  He's the doctor, what do I know?
My left breast began to feel hot and had a faint red rash on it.  It seemed to be getting harder, but I was so busy at work I had no time to take notice of what was happening with my breast.
Then one night acute pain in my breast made me think I'd pulled a muscle or something while trying to swim a couple of lengths of breaststroke.  Frantically swallowing painkillers turned me into a zombie for a day and a half.  I blamed it on over-exercising while trying to strengthen my right shoulder.
How wrong I was.
The breast grew slowly, sneakily, trying to avoid being noticed.  Then I got large boils on the side of the breast.

Typical, by the time I realised how big, hot and hard it was, was when I was camping in the middle of the bush with 27 children.  The pain was intense.  I was uncomfortable, could hardly move.  The campsite managers took pity on me and let me sleep in a new luxury tent overlooking the lake.
A friend phoned my surgeon in Cape Town, he prescribed a seriously strong antibiotic, I managed to get the school driver to pick it up from a pharmacy and bring it to the campsite.
Nausea.
This was not good.
I decided to go back to the local GP when I got back from the camp.  He took one look at my breast and said, "Classic case of chronic mastitis."
Seriously?  Are you kidding me?  I had a mastectomy 2 years ago.  I have no breast tissue, I can't get mastitis.  Even my healthy right breast doesn't have breast tissue.  Two bouts with breast cancer, two mastectomies.
"Then it must be a large breast abscess," he continued undeterred.  "I'm going to send you to a radiology friend of mine.  If there's fluid I'm going to get a local surgeon to cut open the breast and drain the fluid."
"Do you think this is related to the abscess I had a month ago?"
"Definitely not," he said trying to convince himself.  "It's just a coincidence."
The radiologist had a small office down a dark alley.  He felt my breast without washing his hands or wearing gloves.  This did not sit well with my soul.
He was amazed at the amount of fluid.  My heart sank.  That meant a local surgeon would have to cut my breast open like a can of baked beans.  "Oh my God!" he shouted nearly falling over with excitement.  I strained my neck to try and get a closer look at the computer monitor to see if there was a large tumor or something.  "I have no more paper!  I can't print the pictures!"
Seriously?  You have to be kidding me.
But at least he was a creative thinker.  He got his receptionist to dig through the waste bins to find a small piece of paper that could take three pictures.
There was no way I was going to let a local surgeon touch my breast.  That was settled when the local radiologist printed the pictures on paper from the waste bin.
My friend managed to stalk my surgeon in Cape Town and get his mobile number.  He called me at 11pm last Friday night and told me to get on the next flight to Cape Town.
I did.
They aspirated 300ml of fluid and gave me more antibiotics.  The breast is still not right, more doctors' visits next week.  Apparently, both surgeons who saw me stated that they were 110% sure my breast went bad because I wasn't put on antibiotics for the abscess.
What can you do?  You trust medical professionals, but they are human just like us.  They make mistakes.  Nobody is perfect.
Cindy Vine, a breast cancer survivor, is the author of Not Telling, Defective and C U @ 8.

Life in the Pain Lane

Doctors are not 100% truthful.  Well it's not as if they actually lie, they just negate to tell you or warn you about how exactly painful their op is going to be.  This of course leaves you unprepared psychologically.  You think it's going to be a quick and easy procedure.  But 5 weeks later and you still have plenty pain and limited movement.  Pain sucks.

As you can see, pain does not bring out the best in you.  It saps your energy, causes discomfort and kills all creative thoughts you might possess.  In short, pain kills your ability to think and write.  So no I have not been on holiday rejoicing on the extra time available to work on my book Hush Baby.  For the most part I have been laid up in bed knocked out on painkillers.
Why I thought an arthroscopy in the shoulder would be only slightly painful, I don't know.  It's like when the doctor explains the procedure to you, he makes a tiny hole and inserts a camera, that doesn't sound very painful does it?  Unfortunately that silly camera picked up 5 different problems that needed to be rectified immediately.  This meant 5 holes in the shoulder, 5 times the pain and the procedures included shaving off pieces of bone, fixing a frozen shoulder and repairing a torn tendon.
As if this wasn't enough, 2 weeks later I was back in hospital for a breast reconstruction.  This was a very new technique that sounded painless when the plastic surgeon described it to me.  Haha is all I can say.  After that op I felt like I'd been trampled on by 30 men at the bottom of a rugby scrum.  They took 500g of fat from my sides, shook and stirred it like a martini, converted it to 250ml of stem cell rich lipo-filling and injected it into my breast where they had to remove the implant after I went into septic shock last year.  And the plastic surgeon says we'll have round two of that procedure in June.  Charming.

I did get to have breakfast with Jodi Picoult though, and listen to her interesting and entertaining talk on wolves.  Definitely a highlight of my otherwise miserable Christmas holiday.  The lesson to be learned is do not embark on two big surgeries in a two week period.
The weather has been beautiful most of the time, I just haven't been in a condition to enjoy it.
Hopefully my shoulder will be sorted and will be back to normal in a couple of months.  The shoulder surgeon said it can take a year to come right.  As I said before, charming.
So do I have any new year's resolutions?  Survive, dig deep and survive.  That's all I want for 2013.
Have a good one!