When Mommy Is Incapacitated

Last week I scratched a pimple and thought nothing more of it.  About two days later, I noticed that the place where the pimple had been was now starting to hurt.  A lot in fact.  It was starting to swell up and it had a little hard spot around where that pimple had been.  As the days progressed, it just hurt more and more, swelled up more and more, and the hard spot got larger and larger.  You know something bad is going on when your mom (who has been a nurse for about 26 years) looks at this sore spot and says "that's not good".

At my mother's urging (and my husband's fervent agreement with her assessment), I went to the ER after visiting with my mom for the weekend (more on that in a later post).  It was not a good visit.  I had to have my sore spot opened up and cleaned out as it had become infected.  On Wednesday, when I visited my family doctor, I mentioned the wound to him and told him that it wasn't getting any better.  You really know something bad is going on when your doctor looks at your wound and says "Oh my God!  Did you get an antibiotic?" and then proceeds to subject you to horrible pain for about five minutes as he apologizes for the horrible care you received in the ER and for the pain you are in at the moment.

My little pimple turned into MRSA.  If you don't know what MRSA is, please feel free to open another tab on your browser and do a Google search or, if you must, use Bing.  I'll wait.

Because I have MRSA, I have to go to the wound clinic to be seen by a wound specialist and I have to treat the wound with special stuff.  But the pain of the whole thing, at least until I got on antibiotics and had the right kind of wound care, was extremely bad.  I wasn't able to do anything that I normally do.

I have to say that my husband stepped up and helped take care of the housework while I was out of commission.  He cleaned the entire apartment and left me cringing on the couch while watching the little man. He cooked and helped with diaper changes when I couldn't stand up for that long.  He held my hand while I screamed in pain in the ER.

Mommy has never been completely out of commission before.  Even when I've been sick, I've been mobile. The horrible stomach flu that swept through the family back in February didn't keep me from picking up pudding and jello at Walmart while Nate was here with a pukey little boy.  But this MRSA thing made it hard for me to walk, to sit for long periods of time, even to sleep.  All I could think about was the pain.

I'm happy to know that in situations like this, I have a lot of support and a husband who can step up and take over for me.  Thankfully, my wound is healing well and should be completely gone in another week.  Then things can get back to normal.