It’s been a while, quite a while in fact, since I wrote anything on this blog. In fact, I haven’t even looked at it. I found it difficult to keep writing about myself. But things are afoot, and no pun intended.

A quick catch-up, I had the plastic surgery, and the result has been mostly good. The main problem is that a hole formed over a plate in the tibia that was right below a line of stitches – apparently skin doesn’t like growing over metal, and it has yet to heal over. It is getting smaller, but you’d hope so after six months.

I was released from St George on the 18th of December, with a portable drip called a Baxter Pump delivering Vancomycin, as well as a few regrets. They were, of course, the fact that so many of the staff who had looked after me were not farewelled, and that my appreciation of the care that they had shown me was not conveyed.

I did return on the 23rd, much to the surprise of the staff, because the hole in my leg had just begun to open. I was being attended to by the TACT team (excellent people to a man and woman) from Shoalhaven District Hospital, who would come out and change the infusion, and dress the wound (I still had stitches). My friend, Dr ‘Greg’ was visiting with ‘Chantal’ (a nurse) and her parents, and the combination of the three of them (‘Greg’, ‘Chantal’ and ‘Andrew’ from TACT) decided to confer with the duty Orthopod at St George, Dr Siva, because the plate was clearly visible. And so I returned.

My doctor, Prof. Harris, decided that further surgery would have achieved little, the combination of the plate and the still active infection made stitching the sides of the hole together pointless, it would not have taken. So I was released on Christmas Eve, one night back, and sadly, being in another area of the ward, didn’t see any of my regular nurses.

Getting home was a bit of an issue – ‘Greg’ had driven me up (and stayed to see that I was being looked after, before catching the train home) – but my sister and Kerrie organised it so that Fiona drove me to Mittagong, and Kerrie picked me up there.

So life really took on its pattern, at home, mostly in bed, gradually getting better. When I say better, it has been an incremental fight against the infection – Golden Staph is no laughing matter – to the point where next Friday I go in for a bone graft, perhaps six or seven months after I might have had it, had I not got MRSA.

More in much less than six months, writers block is over, as is the modesty.