Below I am going to post a photo of James' legs. Before the photo, I will talk about what has been going on. If you gross out easily, don't look at the photo.
On Friday, November 29, James got out of the hospital. On Tuesday, December 2, he came home from work with a swollen, right ankle. As he sat and worked on homework, his foot and lower part of his calf on the same leg also swelled up. It was extremely painful for him to walk or even stand.
On Wednesday, December 3, he had a follow-up appointment with the CF Clinic following his hospital stay, during that appointment, they looked at his ankle and made arrangements for James to go over to the dermatology clinic.
In the derm clinic, they moved him to a second part of the derm clinic and made several attempts to drain non-existent fluid from his ankle. All this did was put him into even more pain than he had already been in, as well as poke six or seven holes in his ankle. (During this doctor visit, I was at Grand Jury. I had rode the bus and Trax up to the courthouse, James had texted me from the hospital to tell me he was still there. When I was done with GJ, I texted him to tell him, but he as still waiting, so he asked me to ride Trax up there. It is a good thing I did, because I ended up driving home). After the unsuccessful drain attempt, they wheeled him over to radiology, to take x-rays, and then I wheeled him to the outpatient labs, so they could draw blood. Then we headed home. Mind you, he is in a wheelchair, because he really could not walk, the pain was far too great.
He rested when we got home (of course the scrounged up pain pill really helped). Mom rented crutches for him to sort of get around. That night I remember he was almost crying because of the pain, not cool.
Thursday, after having it up all night (while sleeping) he was able to hobble around some. He went to work. That night when he got home, not only was his right ankle/foot/leg swollen, but so was his left. When he took his shoes and socks off, his feet kind of exploded with swelling, they were huge and red, not pretty.
Friday, after sleeping and having his feet elevated, the swelling had gone down some and he went to work. This was also his birthday. He left work an hour early and when I got home, he, mom and I went up to the Festival of Trees. (We were going to have gone Wednesday, but spending half the day at the hospital and then mom and I were planning on going to RS Enrichment, it didn't leave enough time). I had called and found out that there were wheelchairs available, so we went up. After taking 20 minutes to get from 106th South to the South Towne Expo Center (it should take like five minutes, or less) I went in to retrieve the wheelchair. I got him in it and luckily, someone did pull out of a space, so we got a close handicapped space. While we went around looking at the trees and displays, I would notice James wince and the pain spread across his face. He was hurting, even though he wasn't walking. After we got through everything, we stopped for dinner at Village Inn. The photo below was taken after we got home. I was ready to take him to the ER then.
He insisted we wait to go to the ER until after work on Saturday. So, when he got home, we went over to the hospital. They looked at his legs and took some more blood. They basically said they did not know what was wrong and sent us home. They said it could be vasculitis or something else, but there really was nothing they could do for it. We came home and he hung out with his legs up.
Sunday, he slept most of the day and didn't do much. On Monday, he got up, went to work, and came home and did not take his hoes off until way later because he needed to work on his schoolwork and he did not want his swelling to slow him down. Tuesday, when he came home, he took his shoes off, let his feet swell more than they already had and put ice packs on them while they were up.
That brings us to today, Wednesday, December 10. We went up for his follow-up appointment with dermatology. After three doctors came in with us, this is what we found out. They think he may have developed a type of rheumatoid arthritis that about 10% of CF patients develop. This arthritis can cause swelling in the legs and what is called stasis dermatitis (the red coloring with the swelling). There isn't much they can really do and his right foot has gotten better looking, but it still doesn't seem right and stuff. He has had some fever with all of this but e basically has to let it run its course. Thy did prescribe a steroid cream to put on it as well as some compress socks. Oh, yay... I told him he was just jealous cause I had arthritis and he wanted it too. He said I was contagious and to keep y cooties, I told his carpal tunnel was next...
Anyway, here is the photo, like I said, gross...
Until next time...
