OK, here's the deal. I talked to my brother, who is an emergency room nurse, for an hour today, most of it about family stuff, but we talked about your wife for a while. He says that her body will try to reject the metal plates and pins, so she will have a kind of reaction that may cause her to have a fever that comes and goes, especially with the normal diurnal cycle, and that this may last for a while, but that it's characteristic, and doesn't mean she's got a bone infection. He says it's a perfectly natural reaction, and it can take weeks, even a couple of months. He says it will be unpleasant. He says they usually see it in the ER on day 6 after granny broke her hip but was sent home on day 4 or 5, and is brought back feeling crappy. He says 8000 white blood count is not what you need to worry about, a typical white blood for osteomyelitis is 40,000. He says that if it's a real bone infection, she will feel awful, she will feel terrible, terrible pain in the bone, the worst pain she's ever felt, and she'll feel crappy all over like she's got the worst flu she's ever had, achy. She'll be vomiting, she won't eat, and she definitely won't be throwing bedpans. He says that the rule of thumb in the hospital is that once they get feisty, it's time to send them home because they are getting close to well. If her fever hits 103 briefly once or twice a day, that's not what you need to worry about.
So hope this helps, please feel free to bug me if it doesn't.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. |
