The Great Escape

Saturday, April 4th — You know that thing about how I was maybe going to feel a little pain toward the end of the 48-hour period? Excuse me, but that was total crap! By the time I was on the I-5 heading north for home, my lower leg was starting to burn. Early in the evening, as the Boarders continued to stuff themselves on the Betsy Buffet — and thus began to grow and grow — I started to feel the weirdest thing I’ve ever felt (besides the early experience of a baby moving inside me at around four months). The latter, however, was memorable because it was so wonderful. What I experienced on Wednesday night was not at all wonderful, but, I fear, will be memorable.

More than You Want to Know about How It Felt

I could feel a creepy-crawly feeling inside my leg. It made me want to scratch, or at least rub… but I couldn’t do that, because (Stacy had cautioned me) “these are living creatures, and you can’t put pressure on this area or they’ll be squashed.” It was not painful, but it was irritating and strange, and it went on and on and on…

Then, around 9:00 p.m., as I was getting ready for bed, I started feeling what I can only describe as “prolonged bee stings”. Not a bee was in sight, and these, again, were inside the leg, not coming from outside. I can’t account for these sensations, but my guess is that some of the little monsters may have been secreting their oh-so-special enzyme to liquefy the dead tissue right up close to a nerve; and it may have affected the nerve in some way. It was definitely a nerve-type feeling. When a hornet stings you, it’s instantaneous pain — you know you’ve been stung right away. This was like that, except it just… kept… going… ON!

A Certain Lack of Sympathy

I got about two hours of sleep, tops, Wednesday night. Most of the time I spent whining, whimpering, and occasionally actually crying. My poor cat got so fed up with my noises that she left in a huff and went off to sleep with my Beloved Spouse. The worst thing that happens to her there is that he snores loudly. He also sometimes sits on her tail when he comes back from the bathroom and is still half asleep; but she’s learned by experience, and now meows to warn him off. All the meowing she could work up wouldn’t have stopped my whining.

Gradual Discovery of the Getaway

And then, of course, I had to change the dressings about every three hours. That coincided nicely with my usual schedule of getting up to go to the bathroom, except now I had to turn on the light so I could change them properly. All was well with the first change: unwrap elastic gauze, remove soaked gauze pads from top of Containment Field, replace with new pile of gauze pads (taped at the sides so they’d stay in place long enough for me to do the wrapping part), wrap with new elastic gauze.

At the second change, I noticed a slight movement on the roof of the Containment Hut. I grabbed my reading glasses from the counter. Yes, it was true: there was a single maggot, making his wiggly way toward freedom. For someone who tries to respect all life, and often takes spiders outdoors when they are encountered in the bathroom, I took an unholy joy in SMOOSHING that little guy. I thought, Jeez, you’ve been giving me hell all night… take that! You deserve it! Sorry. Guess I’m not so enlightened after all.

At the third change, there were five or six wrigglers to be removed from the roof. And at the fourth change, maybe a dozen. This couldn’t be right! I looked really carefully to see if I could find where they were getting out, and found that the flat lip of the Containment Field, that was supposed to be taped tightly to the skin, had risen in one place. The exit was only perhaps a quarter of an inch long, but that was definitely the place. I tried to re-tape it with the Special Magic Tape they had given me, but you just try figuring out Sheet 1 and Sheet 2 at 4:00 a.m. when you haven’t slept all night. I ended up with layers of tape of various kinds, and a determination to go back to Mercy Hospital on Thursday.

And the saga will continue… tomorrow. Thanks for reading — Betsy