Near Death's Door

Sunday morning dawned, and I was up in good time and eager to get to church.  Then I heard some commotion at the clinic and got a knock on my door.  Till I got there, I had 3 patients.  Two were minor, but this little fellow (below) was in bad shape.  His only complaint was his badly infected leg and fever.  It didn't take long to see that this was no small case.  As far as we could tell, the leg was the cause, but he was in serious condition.  He was running a fever of around 104*F, heart rate was high, as were respirations.  It was clear he needed attention before his body gave up the fight.  

Instead of heading to church, Breanna and I got him situated in the hospital room, got an IV started, administered fever reducers, and got antibiotics started.  It took most of the morning till all of that was done.  We went to our house for a bit and then eat lunch before returning to open up the hugely swollen foot.     

Before we lanced the leg

After

I barely cut the surface of the skin, and the puss started just gushing out.  We must have gotten 16-24 oz of fluid out that first time.  

In the days that followed, we kept the wound open to drain and continued to give him is medicines.  It seemed he was "out of the woods", but Tues morning just after his antibiotics were given, he started showing signs of shock.  His oxygen saturation dropped, he was trembling, and not looking good at all.  We stopped the IV antibiotics, got him on oxygen, and monitored him closely.  Micheal was ready to administer some medicine to counter an allergic reaction if things continued to get worse.  He stabilized and started to improve.  It seemed quite apparent that it was the antibiotics that he reacted to so we had to switch to something different.  

It was amazing because Breanna went back in the room 5 minutes after the IV was started to check on something when she noticed that he wasn't doing well.  If she hadn't gone in then, it could have been too late till we noticed or were notified.  God is SO good!  

We also had 4 births at clinic this week--2 on Tues, 1 on Wed, and 1 on Thurs.  We'll try to post about them soon.