The man I am talking about is 80 years old. He complained of pain in his foot, near the big toe. There was an open sore, that was supposed to be an infected callous. There was a red streak going up his leg, which was an infection. He ended up in the hospital. This was on Easter.
Since Easter he has been home for maybe a month. We could not understand why the sore wasn’t healing. It just continued to get worse. That is when we found out he had a vascular disease and was borderline diabetic. The small blood vessels in his lower extremities were not pumping blood, slowing down the healing process. Mind you the toe was black and so was part of the foot.
This is when they originally started talking about removing the foot. They needed demarcation, the point when the cells stops dying, in order to determinne how much of the foot to remove. When they told the Doctor that they wanted a second opinion, the Dr. changed his mind giving him another option. They decided to replace the vein in his leg, when it was finished he had 100 staples running from his groin to his ankle.
After having the surgery done, the wound was progressively looking worse. There was even a smell, which was putrid, for lack of a better word. He didn’t see the surgeon for 2 or 3 weeks. He was at home for 10 days and progressively looking worse. They had a nurse coming everyday to care for the wound. Yesterday he looked horrible, the wound from the surgery was black in some areas. His family forced him to go to the hospital.
Today he was told they are going to remove his leg from the knee down on Friday, in 2 days. The Dr. said he did all he could. I an confused as to how it got this bad. Why were they waiting for cells to die before they removed part of the foot, but now are going to remove half the leg in 2 days. This progression was very confusing to me and I have lost faith in the Doctors in my area. I will travel 1, 000 miles before I let a doctor in my area touch me again and refuse to go to these hospitals.
I wish I had s better grasp on this. I said at least 10 days ago it was infected, my only medical knowledge is taking a Tylenol or putting on a bandaid. I think they should have caught this earlier, it could have saved his leg and pain. I think these doctors did a horrible job and the for-profit hospital he is in is a joke. They do nothing, keep you for weeks and then send you to a Rehab center that costs $2,000 a day. But I guess as long as they get paid it is ok.
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