Victory & Yet? No bone infection BUT after $64,000 in 3 months NO CLOSER TO HEALING WOUND

Reality has struck while I was asleep...

Okay, I'm $64,000 in the hole {beetween insurance charges & outpatient uncovered expenses}, I have an old brown recluse spider bite that has kickstarted an unspecified infection that no one is following particularly except to tell me what I've already taken & what hasn't worked.

I STILL have the now 21 centimeter by 25 centimeter wound which has expanded by 5 centimeters due to testing & matrix problems.

I STILL have an unhealing infection AND there is no antibiotic for the infection that so far can HEAL it. I'm going to work at the DIS Rolex race with the SAME wound, actually BIGGER from Miami by 5 centimeters AND I'm no closer to the graft than I was in late NOVEMBER when I left the Orlando area with high hopes to be HEALED in Miami.

I'm no longer close to an amputation BUT - with the ruling out of the rod in the leg as the source of the infection; WHERE AM I exactly?

Actually? I'm NO WHERE.

NO one has a handle on the infections, no one understands the machinery of infection & how the additional wound care offices contribute to my additional opportunistic infections & how we are NO CLOSER to the graft if the apligraf is going to be the way to go instead of the collegen injection graft which seems to be the baileywick of the graft doctor down here in Miami & he'd rather look at the $30,000 worth of apligraf instead of the collegen injection. Why is that?

How much would the collegen injection graft be instead? Less? Who knows? If simply asking the question is viewed as a challenge to his expertise & he is so hostile to me that his only answers to me consist of belittling my contributions to my own wound care ....

A simple one on one appointment isn't possible with him outside of the infectious & contentious wound care office, just a "first come first served" ONE day a week wound care dust up to see him.

Interactions like that do NOT motivate me to have to drive down 268 miles each way only on certain Fridays to have him say yeah or nay every week on whether I'm getting the apligraf or the wound matrix plus compressive wrapping that has to be changed, sometimes on a two times a day basis & he demands that I ONLY go to wound care professionals for each change...

I'm not really motivated to have to drive down here up to 8 weeks for more applications of a graft material that I'm not even sure is the BEST FIT with a hostile graft expert who won't allow questions.

Here are those questions:

1. How do you propose to use a product who's pre-graft requirements include an operation that is in direct opposition to how you can deal with the pyoderma that is under it?

2. What good is a graft that grows the very wound that it is supposed to cover & heal?

3. What good is a graft medium that not only hurts with the pre-graft wound matrix that goes one with saline on an open LIVE wound over what might be an infection that you REQUIRE is healed up prior to the graft but that we are ultimately SEALING IN on the inside of the matrix...which can only be floated OFF with MORE saline on the open wound's edges; which also threaten to grow by blistering each time the saline is applied on the edges.

4. What good is a weekly application treatment that has the possibility of making the wound worse by simply opening it in a germ filled outpatient wound care setting on a weekly basis that could open me to catching another opportunistic infection in the MIDDLE of getting the graft?

5. What good is having to drive over 568 miles on the morning of the first night of my work week for my job? Except for the collegen injection graft, the apligraf can be applied in a closer setting but NOT in places that understand or can work with people who have pyoderma gangrinosum.

6. Why should I have to scream for more than an hour for each application of a wound matrix BEFORE we even get to the graft? Why can't we deaden the wound before applying something that causes so much pain & stress?

Granted, the premier doctor for the pyoderma is willing to see me on an outpatient basis; down HERE in Miami; where ever I go for the graft; so I'm not TIED to having the graft HERE in Miami; but again, I will not be underwritten for the other than medical expenses.

I am no further along in my quest to be inpatient in order to clean up the infection once & for all. Every doctor down here wants to pass the buck to someone else to handle the infection. No ONE doctor has attempted to treat on his/her own or tried to find me a doctor who can go beyond the simple cellulitis diagnosis.

The pyoderma doctor is the one, may I remind you, that came up with the incorrect "worst case scenario" that lost me a doctor who would have put me in for at least 3 days of antibiotic IV & a surgery to get rid of the rod & screws that I am now told cannot REALLY be ruled as the cause of the underlying infection. Of course, that means that it still might be the underlying cause, but I still have to find someone to test me for the titanium allergy.

The central Florida immunology doctor that insists that I have to take all 90 metal allergy tests at the same time; is being called incorrect by the D.O. here in Miami; who pronounced the rod as being titanium & not stainless steel by just looking at the X-Rays. The D.O. is saying that I should be able to just get the 6 metals that are needed & that the real issue is that my insurance may not cover allergy testing.

I'll have to check on that again. I don't think that that is the answer here at all. But its another fight for another day.

So what am I still doing in Miami? I have a few more hyperbaric chamber treatments to go & would still like to do the white blood cell testing to be SURE about the bone infection.

I wonder if ORMC's trauma team used what was available at the time of my operation & that just happened to be a stainless rod instead of a titanium one. I believe that I remember having that conversation WITH the ortho surgeon AT the ORMC hospital during my month's stay there but ... but how do I differ with someone with experience like the D.O. who made a pronouncement like that after looking at his in depth detailed X-Rays.

So HERE I am, BACK at Square ONE.

Big wound, no closure after almost 3 months & no future of graft until we can get the infection under control.

No one, NO ONE on my case to try to test out what can be used to clear the infection except for the SAME three liver damaging drugs that I am already sensitive to.

HELP!

AGAIN!

again

I

am

so

tired

of

hurting!