Home, don't know for how long.

I did come home for Shabbat, thankfully. It was great to be able to be with my family and friends in our beautiful succah. I guess I'll go back for the gastroscope test when they call and tell me it is scheduled (they told me it'd be Monday or Tuesday). I am supposed to go back as an in-patient on the same ward, so I have mixed feelings. I have mixed feelings about this whole thing... it's hard for me to write about it now, I think it is too fresh. I am still in lots of pain and I miss the relief the optalgin IV gave me, but I needed to get out of the hospital.
I think it's mostly hard because I was there for four days and there is no diagnosis. The ultrasound was a very important diagnostic tool in this case, and it wasn't done properly.
Don't want to talk about it, but I want to update the blog. I decided to use a post that I wrote the day I went into hospital. I hadn't finished it. I intended to, but the back pain took hold fast and furious.
There was another medical event that morning, before the pain happened, and that is what I started writing about.

So here is the post from the 10th of October:

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It's been a while since I've had one of those "unusual medical happenings" posts. This one goes under that category.

So you know that rash on gapey which I have briefly spoken about? The one that hasn't gone away for about six months, and I've put just about every sort of cream on it? Well, yeah, that one. It's not all over gapey, but on the side where the graft didn't take so well.

Today's dermatologist appointment was for getting a specimen of the skin analyzed to see if it is a sort of fungal infection. Well, the immediate analysis shows that it isn't a fungus. They are going to do a six-week culture.

After the lab, I went back to the dermatologist. I was expecting her to give me yet another prescription for a cream, but instead she got this concerned look on her face. She wanted to see the rash again. She called in the plastic surgeon to come look also. This was a plastic surgeon who I don't know (a rare occurrence here in this town). He came in and was eyebrow-raising impressed with gapey. He asked me, of course, what was it from. I told him in my flat, emotionless way I have grown to say it, 'necrotizing fasciitis'. He said "uh-huh". Ok, then moving right along...

He suggested that it needs to be biopsied.
"What"? I said.
Then he and the dermatologist were talking to each other without me involved. Love that.
Apparently, these sort of large grafts can develop tumors underneath them. Yes, tumors. It wasn't specified which sort of tumors. The plastic surgeon said that we usually see this sort of thing happen in older grafts, and mine is only four years old. But, he said in rare cases it can happen. In rare cases. Uh-huh.

The sort of rash I had is sometimes an indicator of something taking place deeper under the graft. But, I had the mesh surgery just over a year ago, so you'd think that the surgeon then would've seen something?
Well, it's probably nothing, *BUT*, I had the biopsy done. I was a bit shocked, needless to say,

It didn't hurt, they used a local anesthetic. Just took a little piece right outta gapey.

Now it'll take six weeks to get an answer! Why so long? Who knows.

So in six weeks I'll have the answer about the long-term skin culture, and about the biopsy.
I am putting it out of my mind from here on out. I have better things to think about, like making invites for my son's BarMitzvah, and planning details... it's in three weeks. :-)