Updates and Endings

I have been out of the hospital for over a week at this point and generally feeling much better.

The let me go home Friday at noon and I first went by the heart doctors office and they put a heart rate monitor on me. This thing is no fun at all. Always getting in the way or tangled, or pulled off. They want me to wear it for 30 days. Not happening.

When they took me off the iv antibiotic they put me on a pill called doxycyclene, which is a weaker antibiotic but still fairly strong. It is actually the treatment for Lyme disease (I don't have it - they tested me!) and anthrax. However, the side effects are sometimes interesting. Mostly headaches, but you can be photosensitive while on it too. I have 2 more days of it to go and I will be done with it.

The surgery incision seems to have stopped closing up at the rate it was to start. Now it seems to be the same size every day. Still having to pack it with gauze each morning. However it is not deep enough to hold much so it mainly just falls back out during the day. Hopeful that it will close up soon and make my life easier...

The leg bite is still open and a little black looking underneath. Not sure that it is healing very well but it is also not getting worse. Basically just putting some gauze over it with some kind of absorbent pad right over the bite.

I'm slowly getting back my strength and gaining some weight back. I lost 23 pounds between hiking and the hospital. Not sure of the exact numbers but I think it was 8 pounds on the trail and the rest in the hospital.

I went back to work Monday for about 3 hours and then worked almost my regular hours Tuesday. The rest of the week I was there full time. It was tiring but not too bad or to the point of exhausting me. I am actually glad to have something to do after 2 weeks of boredom.

As I said previously, my trip is officially over. Highly disappointing, but life happened. I started thinking about what I could do instead and have come up with a few things.

Later in the summer I will be taking a railfanning trip up to North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Planning on stopping in at Spencer, Horseshoe Curve, and Roanoke. As part of that trip I want to at least do trail magic in the area that my hiking friends will be in. That will probably be northern Virginia to southern Pennsylvania. So basically the same area I will be in already.

The other new thing I will be doing is going back to school to get my master's degree. I have already started the applications process for Middle Georgia State University for the Master's in Information Technology program they will be starting this fall. I will be the very first class to go through this program. How cool will that be?

Anyways, that ends the story of my 2015 Appalachian Trail thru hike attempt. Needless to say I would rather be out on the trail still, but I am looking at it like it was just not meant to be this year. Who knows, 2017 is looking pretty empty on my calendar...

Out of the hospital

My last update had me upbeat about going home soon. Well, that didn't happen...

Saturday night I got way worse and Sunday was terrible. The new antibiotic they put me on for the MRSA really messed me up. Kidney levels went back up, white blood cell count went back up, my resting heart rate dropped into the low 40s constantly and even down into the 30s once. I felt terrible and the little appetite I had recovered went away again.

This lasted for 2 days and then I started getting a little better but nothing changed until they took me off the antibiotic, called cubicin. As soon as it flushed from my system I immediately got better.

The numbers dropped and my heart rate came back up within 48 hours of stopping the iv. They were still worried about my heart rate so they ordered me a heart monitor for when I left the hospital. Great...

Thursday night they told me I could go home the next day so I was very excited about that news. They got me out by noon on Friday.

I ended up spending 13 days in the hospital. Not what I expected when I got off the trail two weeks earlier to say the least. I still thought I would be getting back on and continuing my adventure.

That all changed. My trip is officially over for this year for several reasons. It is mainly due to time. It will take me 6 weeks to recover to where I can get back on. That would put me 2 full months behind and finishing in Maine in late October, which is past the deadline to finish. I do not want to go southbound as I feel that the only acceptable conclusion to the journey would be to finish on top of Katahdin and not some random spot.

The 6 week recovery is for the surgery incision and leg to fully heal. The doctors say that if I try to go hiking before it is fully healed I will most likely get staph again. Yeah, I'll wait!

So like I said not according to plan but such is life. It was simply not meant to be this year. I WILL be returning to the trail for another thru hike attempt at some point. Not this year and not the next, but I will be back!

Still at the Hospital

Well it's been over a week and I am still in the hospital. Lots of things went wrong all stemming from either 1 or 2 infections.

While hiking I thought I was getting some chafing. No big deal. It's hiking. Chafing happens. This went on for most of the first 2 weeks on the trail. It was noticeable but bearable. By the time I got to the NOC it was slightly swollen but not something I felt I should worry about. I had gotten new compression shorts so o thought that would take care of it.

About the same time, near the NOC, I got a bug bite on the back of my right knee. Didn't think anything if it other than it was in an annoying spot. It looked like any other of the numerous bites I already had.

The bite kept getting worse after I left the NOC however. It got redder and had a dark spot under the skin after a few days.
By the time I got to Fontana, the bite looked pretty bad and I had some decent swelling going on, again what I thought was chafing. Walking was not pain free, but I expected it to hurt a little.

The first night in the Smokys was when I knew something was up. I had uncontrollable shakes and chills and both problems became painful.

The next day hiking was very slow to keep the pain down. The ridgerunner advised me to go to Cade's Cove but I wanted to try and make it to Gatlinburg.

Three miles later I saw that Gatlinburg was out of the question. The leg looked really bad and the chafing was really getting to me.

The day hiker who helped me out was a doctor and 100% convinced me to get off the trail and get help for the leg. I figured while the leg healed the chafing would go away.

The med stop in Tennessee gave me a ten day antibiotic treatment plus a shot for the leg. Sounded good. I would stay off the trail until after Mel's graduation. Plenty of time to rest up and heal.

That night sucked. The swelling was terrible and painful. I decided to go back to the med stop when I got home and have the chafing checked out. Good thing I did.

The med stop on Zebulon immediately sent me to the ER. The ER doc had some theories but wanted an ultrasound first. The blood tests came back with some really bad numbers for white blood cell count, indicating an infection.

I was admitted and immediately placed on no food or water in prep for probable surgery. Lots of different docs came by and finally they decided to wait until they had more info before surgery.

The ultrasound on Sunday confirmed fluid but also something else, what they thought was a hydrocele. They wanted to see if the antibiotics would reduce the swelling first so we waited.

On Monday they took me back to ultrasound for my kidneys and they looked at my bladder as well.

Then the kidney doc showed up with some bad results from the kidneys, so they modified the antibiotics trying to reduce those numbers. By Wednesday, when I had the surgery, all the numbers were heading in the right direction.

In surgery they removed the fluid and the hydrocele. They drained something over 350+ ml or cc whatever the measurement is. Like I said: swelling. Lots of swelling.

After I got back from recovery they said I would have to have to wound packed with gauze twice a day until it healed from the inside out. However, Thursday morning when the NP changed it she said it would only have to be once a day. That was good news. The bad news is that I found out that morphine takes longer than 30 seconds to work. She changed the packing literally as soon as she gave me the iv injection. That was not fun. Longest 5 minutes of my life I think. Took over 2 hours to recover from that torture.

Friday she changed it again (correctly with the pain meds!) and it had already healed more than expected. Saturday even more. Looking very good so they tell me.

As for the infections nobody can tell me for sure what happened. The bite was probably just a bite that got infected. The hydrocele was infected with MRSA and they have no clue what happened there. No evidence of any bite, cut, scrape, etc. They think that it was 2 different infections at separate times.

As of Saturday night, over a week in, everything seems to be healing nicely. The white blood cell count is almost back to normal from 20,000. My kidney numbers are looking good as well.

The kidney doc and surgery doc have said Monday for release, depending on what the infectious disease doc says. That will depend on when I can come off the IVs. The antibiotics I need are apparently iv based.

Hopefully I will be out of here Monday!