The Foot Saga

Since I haven't been blogging very much I thought I needed to at least explain why...
we are fighting a war against the foot demons over here at our little house.
Right after our vacation in July, Buzz was admitted to the hospital with an infection to his right foot. (landed at John Wayne airport and basically went straight to the hospital). He had a blister that was not healing and some organism got in to the blister and traveled up between his big toe and 2nd toe and had a field day...actually it was 3 organisms. Any way - they ate away good tissue and started killing off his toe / foot.
So the doctors admitted him for IV antibiotics and took off dead tissue and basically opened up his foot - to try and begin the healing process. Each day they came in and removed a little tissue.
They talked about amputating toes vs. amputating the upper 1/3 of his foot.
After a week in the hospital they sent him home. They did not amputate anything at this point but decided to see if it could heal up. This is made harder by the fact that he only has one open artery in his leg (the other 2 are clotted off - so that means little oxygen gets to his foot. Little oxygen = little healing) He came home on IV antibiotics through a PICC line (a centrally placed IV line the dumps the medication right in to his heart) and on daily wound care. We initially had to do dressing changes twice a day but now are down to once a day.

Well, we are now in to week 3 of the foot saga...not much has changed. He is still on IV medications and once a day dressing changes. We tried an enzyme to clear things up but didn't help much.
Yesterday he had a doctor's visit and they saw one little area of promise on the foot - an area over some muscle that looked like maybe it was starting to heal. So on we continue. They still talk about amputation but we are trying to salvage as much as the foot as we can.
The 2nd toe looks the worse - still has black/necrotic areas. You can see his big toe bone and 2nd toe bone as well as tendons along the top of his foot.
He has been instructed to stay off of his foot - which means alot of lying around which he doesn't like. But the wound is so tender and could easily break a toe or something, so he is trying to just lay around. I know he must be bored!
I had taken a few weeks off of work but now I am back. Trying to just manage everything. I have to trade days around to make doctor's appointments and I am home at night to do his dressing changes and to hang the next antibiotic. Our bedroom looks like a mini clinic but at least I already knew how to care for the wound and didn't need to learn something new...

And that is the saga of the foot so far - I'll be posting more so stay tuned.