Dee's Doctor appointment updates

After the wedding, I decided to follow up on some unresolved health issues

I went to the podiatrist for a problem I was having with one of my toes.
The nail got real thick, turned black and when I tried to trim the nail a bunch of digusting stuff came out. I treated it the best I could but figured the doctor would need to remove the rest of the nail.

So I went to the doctor for my left foot, you will notice in the photo below...it is my right foot that is bandaged.  No...the doctor didn't make an error. He noticed the same infection (abcess under the nail) that I had previously dealt with the prior weeks.

So he made an I&D (Incision and Drainage).  He removed a piece of the nail and then put some "magic medicine" in so that the nail would not regrow in that spot again.  Follow-up treatment is epsom salt soaks twice a day and antibiotic ointment.  So it's been almost a week and now I see the same thing happening on another toe. I think the nail clippers were probably infected and have caused the infection to spread to the rest of my toes. No wonder they've been sore and red for a while.  So I'm soaking the clippers in alcohol and hoping for the best. Oh brother....time will tell.
- - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Other areas of concern are my sinuses and the lump I've noticed on the left side of my neck.  This is where, being a nurse is not a good profession to be in. I immediately jumped diagnosis of Hodgkins Disease. Luckily my husband coaxed me to get to the doctor and get "this thing" figured out.  I had an appointment last week (10/08/13) with the ENT that Doug saw for his sinus surgery.  He listened to my long list of symptoms and palpated my neck.  He said "that little thing".  "We wouldn't do anything for something less than 1cm in size" "It's probably just an inflamed lymph gland because of your repeated sinus infections"   So to move along, I had a sinus ct scan in his office on Friday (10/11/13). I ended up at CareNow (our local urgent care facility) with a bad case of a sinus infection. The urgent care doc gave me a dexamethasone injection (decadron & methylprednisolone) - prescribed Biaxin for 10 days along with a 5 day dose pack of oral prednisolone and steroir nasal spray. I'm feeling much more improved since Saturday.

Today, I saw the ENT for the results of that scan.  He said I do not have a sinus cyst (which is what I was told by a prior physician) but a great deal of fluid backed up into my maxillary sinus. He said the "plumbing" is bad and this fluid will never drain. And every bug I come in to contact with inflames this fluid and causes an infection.  The treatment is ...of course...surgery. He said it would be a 30 minute procedure to fix the plumbing issue and drain the sinuses of the infected material. 

Surgery has yet to be scheduled..but will likely be sometime in November.