#3

Hopefully this series will not reach double digits.

I saw Dr. Spector today for the third time in less than a week. Two days of Augmentin-875 had not done much to make my foot smaller or stop the infection; the situation had only gotten worse. Of course, working 10 hours yesterday to make my weekly deadline did not help; I suppose, though, I could have not worked yesterday and woken up this morning with a clownish foot and no job to return to once this heals .... save my highly lucrative professional running career.

So I saw Dr. Spector today. He put about five shots in my foot to numb it out and opened the gash wider and literally squeezed the stuff out -- drained it, so to speak. The idea here is that the reason my foot was swelling with infection was that everything was trying to escape through a tiny wound and thus had nowhere to go. Afterward, he wrapped my foot and gave me a super-cool (as in, not cool at all) surgical boot which was exactly what I've been needing these past few days. And now the meds should actually work.

I am now taking Cipro in addition to Augmentin, and the funny thing about taking Cipro was that this what the Peace Corps doctor in Niger would have us take for gastro-intestinal issues. It worked like a charm! Additionally, Dr. Emily (who is suddenly rethinking her American Studies doctorate in favor of becoming a podiatrist) has been nice enough to unwrap and wrap the tape around my foot thrice daily and apply antiobiotic ointment.

So I'm out of work for the rest of the week, basically bed-ridden, and hopefully when I go to see the doc again on Friday things will look a lot better. I also have some codein in case the pain really flares up (thus far it has not) or maybe in case I just get really bored.