tryna find the one that can fix me

[erika]

I'm getting better. Slowly. Frustratingly slowly. But not because of the pneumonia or anything like that... That's seeming gone now, and really that would be too easy. One opportunistic infection just isn't enough for me!

Finished the antibiotics for the lung infection last Monday. Nipple looked ... off but it wasn't painful. However by Wednesday the excruciating fucking pain made it clear that I had developed another fucking nipple infection/non-lactional mastitis/minor periductal abscess.

(So long history short: in 2011, I had breast surgery on my right breast, twice, for repeated periductal abscess. One of which was 11cm long—so big it actually curved around my breast. They threatened me with a complete ductectomy if the abscess recurred again, but it didn't.

Five years later in 2016 [probably because I didn't quit smoking tobacco in 2011 like I should have] I fucking got another one. But this time, in my left breast. I didn't get surgery right away—even though that probably would have meant it didn't come back— because the first surgeries were psychologically traumatizing and I kept thinking it wouldn't come back.

[I did quit smoking tho. 4 years tobacco free at this point.]

The initial left breast infection was in Feb. 2016 receded in March, then reoccurred in June (probs 'cause I was living in my car for a couple weeks), and stuck around until (iirc) December '16 or January 2017. I had literally just moved across the country and started working full time so I didn't think it was a good time to have surgery, although in retrospect, I wish I had, of course. As I was on antibiotics the entire length of the infection, I'd just squeeze pus out of it every time I changed my ice packs at work and every half an hour at home. Thank god for cannabis (at home) and ice. Looking back I'm not sure how I managed, and as much as I wish I'd kept up with my journal I can't fault myself for anything I did then.

yeah hahahahahahaha. Thinking it wouldn't come back? Thinking I could get away without having surgery? Infection's come back 3 times so far and every time since I haven't been able to get surgery—first time I had nowhere to live (June 2016), second time (February 2018) I didn't have insurance because I had to drop Medicare due to being too broke [picked it back up ASAP], and now I can't get surgery because there's a fucking world-wide outbreak of a novel contagious virus.

Oh, and I can't get treatment (antibiotics) before I get surgery because they need the evil duct to be severely inflamed so they yank the correct overgrown boil. Basically, I have to stay in severe pain and risk infection traveling into my lymph/blood system for as long as it takes until they can schedule surgery. In California right now they're only doing surgery if there is no other treatment AND you will die within the next two weeks without it. Okay then!

Annnnnnd now we're caught up.)

Called in to see my new practitioner over video chat, he set me up with a shiny new inhaler and told me he'd need a 'discharge sample'. That's the delightful shit you don't wanna hear when the infection is on one of the most sensitive places of your body—drop in and squeeze out some wound-juice for me, Erika! Just in case!

So I then got to run by his office where a security guard and nurse tag-teamed me with a thermometer. I was trying to figure out how I'd explain the fever I might be running that probably had absolutely nothing to do with any kind of viral infection and how was I supposed to explain that—yank down my shirt and show them my pus-filled left titty?

Moot point as I wasn't running a fever. However, in the two hours since the video call I had developed some very sexy red streaks running streaks from my nipple towards my heart, though! Hooray for signs of blood infection. Everybody got gratifyingly scared when I told them about the red streaks, which is about my only amusement right now.

At least the antibiotics are working. Again. It's day 5 of 7 and I might not even need to take week 2, which would be a) a first and b) great because I want a fucking drink, goddamnit. As I've been telling everyone:

Y'all living your best Quarantini life and I've been on antibiotics/NSAIDs since March 1st?! WHAT THE FUCK. I was made for day drinking!

But! Whenever this comes back again (in 2022?), I'm going under the knife immediately and caution be damned.

Comments

[oursin]

Oh, ow, commiserations, that is not what you want at any time, and in particular not at this time. Hope the antibiotics continue to do their good thing.

Praise be to science (tw: racism, death)

[erika]

I know, right!? I love Regency romances, especially yours, but whenever I longingly muse about time travel I realize a) I would have been sold as a slave in the United States or possibly came to a violent end as a product of "miscegenation" or b) I would just die any time I got an infection like everyone else did. No wonder everyone had 6+ kids, even aside from a lack of truly reliable 'set it and forget it' birth control.

Re: Praise be to science (tw: racism, death)

[oursin]

There is a reason why Madame C- was all 'yay! scratching for the smallpox!' (Jenner's vaccination): smallpox was a major threat at the time, and although over the C19th there were problems with the introduction of mass vaccination programmes (because of lack of understanding of germ theory and cross-infections), it was still A Boon.

[worlds_of_smoke]

owwwww. that sounds like lots of pain. D: I've had hidradenitis cysts on my breasts and you get to the point where you do surgery on yourself to get it gone.

[content: gross]

[erika]

Yeaaaaaaaaaah. The most difficult part for me to acclimate to is how truly satisfying I start finding getting that gross goo out, and you're right, I battled daily with how I'd want to find sharp objects and just cut this shit out of me which is just a little too close to self-harm for me. Also I would lose all sensation in that nipple and even after the infection was gone sensation would take months to return, which is bizarre.

Re: [content: gross]

[worlds_of_smoke]

Yeah, I'm a chronic skin picker because yay OCD, so having my hidradenitis in (mostly) remission is a really good thing.

[to_do_list]

Gosh that sounds awful!

[erika]

It is! If I get a chance to speak to them privately, I've told people who run anti-smoking campaigns a somewhat more sanitary version of this story and given them permission to scare people with it. If someone had told ME that I would have to be in excruciating pain for months just because I wanted to have a cigarette, it might have made a biiiiig difference.

[scatteredshells]

Oh my gods EEEEK *wraps his body around you protectively*

[enemyofperfect]

Oh my gosh, so much sympathy. I hope you continue to get better!