I am convinced that the doctors in this town don’t really know what they are doing, nor do they care. I have just been through it with my ankle and at first they told me it was a strained Achilles tendon, and then it was a fractured foot. When I went into the doc’s to have the foot cast, they looked at the x-ray and told me “This isn’t fractured, who told you it was?” So off went the crutches and I just had a really painful foot. They then said it was probably a partially ruptured Achilles tendon.

The next visit, the powers to be decided to test me for gout so blood was drawn. All levels normal-nope, wasn’t gout. Ankle still swollen, red, inflamed and oh my god painful. So I ask “What is wrong with my foot?” They say it must be broken! MRI will tell us. Well, MRI is out of my reach (no health insurance) so instead they schedule me for an orthopedic surgeon consult. He sees my foot and says “This looks like gout!” GRRRR! In the meantime, I am dealing with pain so severe I just want to cut my friggin foot off! They give me oxycoatin (doesn’t touch the pain.

I call them back and tell them the pills make so sick and they don’t touch the ankle pain, they are perplexed and don’t know quite what to do now. I was also running fevers; I had chills and couldn’t keep anything down. Finally, I had enough! I started logging when I first noticed the symptoms, what my foot looks like, how it feels. Then it dawned on me, I have an infected ankle! I got scratched prior to leaving for the convention. I was barefoot and Baker ran over the top of my foot leaving deep scratch marks on the top of my foot. I dropped my foot immediately into a mixture of bleach and hot water, something an emergency room doctor told me to do with cat scratches. I must have killed some of the bacteria, but not all of it.

I started taking a broad spectrum antibiotic yesterday, and soaking my foot in cold water and GSE already the ankle swelling is going down and it feels better. The inflammation is gone and the fevers are receding.

I see a distinct difference in how I am treated in the health community without insurance from the way I was treated when I had good coverage. They say it doesn’t make a difference, but I beg to differ. It makes a great deal of difference. When I called my doctor’s office this morning to make another appointment about my ankle, I was told he can’t see me till the end of Feb. It’s too bad that here, apparently you even have to die by appointment.