Again... an infection. This time I'm armed to fight.

[Restorer]

So, I woke up on Monday with a bit of a pain in my side, and I checked the "pillow" in the drain line and it looked a little cloudy. So I called my PD nurse and he had me put in some fluid and come in 2 hours later to get it cultured. At the clinic, I did an exchange with a bag spiked with two antibiotics (Ancef and Fortaz, if you're interested), and the drained fluid was fairly cloudy.

I already had an appointment for my monthly labs today, so I went back, got my labs drawn and everything, and then got trained to put my own antibiotics into the bags. I left with a big sharps container full of supplies, a box of large syringes, a box of Betadine pads, and a box of gloves.

I'm supposed to put antibiotics in every bag I use - the 1.5L manual bag I use in the evening, and both 5L bags I use at night - and to change my cycler settings so I'm doing a last fill of 1000 ml and carrying that all day.

As soon as my culture results come in over the next day or so, I'll probably be told to stop using one of the antibiotics, as right now it's a combination of two wide-spectrum antibiotics to nuke anything I might have. Once that's figured out, I can start doing more targeted therapy with either the gram-positive antibiotic or the gram-negative one. Unless I have something weird that's not susceptible to those...

Now I have to do the semi-nervewracking process of spiking all the bags every night, starting with reconstituting the antibiotics.

[Rerun]

Sounds like you've got a handle on it.  Good catch!

                         

[Des]

Is peritonitis a comon occurance?

Ignore the above question..... I just saw it asked on another post.

I hope you caught it early.

[Ken Shelmerdine]

If you've not had any abdominal pain it looks like you caught it in time. Well done!

[billybags]

Poor you, how many times have you got infections. Scary hope all is well soon.

[Darthvadar]

Best of luck getting on top of the infection, Restorer....

Keep chin as well as feet up...

 

May God bless and protect you...

Darth...

[Restorer]

Ken, I did have abdominal pain. When I woke up to see the cloudy fluid, I already had a pain in my side, and it got slowly worse all day. It started to get a little better just before I went to bed, after I had done one exchange with antibiotics.

[Restorer]

Oy, my first night of doing the whole thing. Four vials to mix up, three bags to spike. Hopefully tomorrow I'll hear which bug this is so I can halve the number of vials and syringes I have to use. It took me 45 minutes to do it all.

[sico]

Thats no good Restorer. I hope it doesn't get any worse and you get better soon.

[Restorer]

I forgot to mention: the pain went away completely yesterday. Today I feel a little better, but I seem to have some minor joint/muscle pain that I typically get when I get sick. The way these antibiotics cleared up the pain, I'm optimistic that they'll be really effective at getting rid of the bug altogether.

Except that whenever I get an infection, my UF goes way down. Now I'm retaining a little fluid, and it's making me a little uncomfortable in the mornings - mild headache, feeling bloated and puffy.

[KICKSTART]

I hope you are soon feeling back to your old self 

[Darthvadar]

Feeling any better today, Restorer???....

 

Darth....

[Restorer]

Feeling completely normal again. Pain's gone, bags are clear, not feeling bad at all.

Today I went to pick up more antibiotics (the results from the culture came back no growth, so we still don't know what I had/have, so I'm stuck on the full 21-day course of both antibiotics), and I got my labs back (which were taken the day after I reported the peritonitis). My phosphorus, for the first time ever, is actually in range! 5.1! Unfortunately, my protein was down (albumin 2.9), so it might have been due to me feeling bad and eating less, rather than effective treatment. Regardless, I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing and hope it stays low. My hemoglobin is also a bit low (9.5), which is to be expected with an infection. I got another shot of EPO today to try to boost it up.

[george40]

Im glad you made it through! Great fight you put up! 

[Ken Shelmerdine]

Well done Restorer you won.

[Wattle]

   I am glad you had your eye on it and followed through with the treatment.   

Infections are  a pain in the   

[dwcrawford]

Just reading about  your problem Restorer...  So sorry but really glad you handled it so well.  Good Job.

Now you can get back to what you do best... Teaching us about food.  lol   Really, we have to start working on your audition for Food Network...

How did your haircut turn out?