10 days of Amoxicillin did wonders. The baby’s thigh is soft, and there is a brown mark where the red once was. She still has loose stools, but they have more consistancy. Her bottom is no longer sore. Given that many of these wounds end up having MRSA (methicillin resistant staph aureus), we have much to be thankful for.

 Her follow-up appointment with the pediatrician is today. Bruce will have to take her alone because I’m working.

The baby has a spider bite. It started off looking like a big mosquito bite. Bruce showed it to me a few days ago. Yesterday when I got home from work, it had grown, was hard and bright red, and had a pustule on it. It is on her right upper thigh.

There have been a rash of “spider bites” in the hospitals the past few years. They don’t really know what causes them. It is starts as something like cellulitis and turns into a carbuncle which has to be incised and drained. I have watched such procedures and cared for people in the aftermath. The doctor very often takes out part of the musculature or surrounding tissues depending on how extensive it is.

So with the baby, I didn’t want to wait until Monday. Yesterday was Friday. I fully expected her to be admitted and put on IV antibiotics. I called the pediatrician’s on call line, and was told to go to Wheeling Hospital’s ER. There we were put in the “Fast Track,” by triage. Had I known what that was, I would have known first off that we would thus most likely be discharged. She was sent home on Amoxicillin.

She has no fever, but she has had loose or watery stools since yesterday sometime, and her bottom is getting very sore. This was before the antibiotics, so whatever it is, it is obviously affecting her somewhat systemically.

I was pleased with the care. It was another situation where we were seperated by curtains, and heard every bit of what was going on “next door.” The patient was quite amusing, and I’m sure was making the day of the medical staff much more enjoyable.

I have an answer! The number of the dextrose on a bag of IV fluid is how many grams are in 100 mL (cc) of fluid. So D5W has 5 grams in 100 mL. That means if an IV is running at 100 cc/hr, then every hour, you are getting 5 grams of carbohydrates.

 Now I can help my mother account for the carbs. But she just told me that his IV fluid was discontinued.

However, when they made his diet soft with nectar thickened liquids yesterday, they somehow left out the “diabetic” part. Arghhh!

Two notorious persistant acts have made their impression on me in healthcare this week. Now in my experience, 30 to 50 % of the hospital population is diabetic. One act is the use of dextrose as the base of antibiotic infusions. The other is the habitual use of high glycemic foods for meals.

I have yet to find a healthcare professional who can tell me the number of carbs in any given amount of dextrose solution.

 You would think that a hospital or other health care facility would be on the cutting edge of what is healthy and good for the patient. However, cultural trends prevail.

This has got to be changed. Until it is, no hospital has any grounds saying they are managing any patient’s diabetes.

There is the hat from Hilton Head. We all bought one impromptu right before kayaking on the sound. It has a cloth band around it and a tie at the neck. It is my favorite one.

There is the hat with beads woven into the base that I bought because it was pretty.

There is the denim hat I bought when I decided to get divorced in 1993. I still have that one.

I rarely wear hats. I’m not really a “hat” person. But I am only 42. I have 40 years to go, maybe. Once upon a time, I was a kid who loved to swim. How many times did my nose get burnt to a crisp, and peel? I lived for going to the lake, or the beach, or the pool. How many times did I drive the farmall tractor around the hayfield in cut-offs and throw bales in sleeveless shirts, scratching up my arms? How many times did people think my brown hair was really blonde during the summer? When sunscreen came out, I bought the tanning oil that made you tan darker, not the protective stuff. Tanning lotion had bad chemicals in it – and what were the chances of me getting cancer? That happened to old people!

Yesterday I was waiting for my stitches to be removed. The man who came out before I went in had a bandaid over the bridge of his nose. He was “elderly.” He looked in the mirror and said, “I want to see how handsome I look.” I replied, “At least it is on the bridge of your nose and not the tip.”

He squinted – presbyopia – to see my nose a little better, his neck pushing his head forward. I’ve gotten used to those looks. Then he smiled. That always happens. Then there was the suppressed laugh – the ever-so-slight chest heave that people get when they are trying hard to be polite. But it was okay because he had a bandaid on his nose, and I had 3 stitches in the tip of mine. I chuckled, and he let the suppressed snigger out.

After he walked out, I looked around the office. There were expensive furniture and mirrors; a nice hat rack; expensive magazines. Her plastic surgery business was lucrative south of Pittsburgh in the global warming era. Her office had a west coast air about it, somehow, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Maybe it was the wholistic health atmosphere, and her caring attitude.

 Sun hats denote a change in my way of life. Will I regret my foolhardy youth? It was fun. If I could go back, I would’ve worn sunscreen.