An Update from Santa Fe

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Today we went to the Doctor for the fourth time and I'm happy to say that I think Terry is well on his way to recovery.

While I'm talking about this, I'd like to mention hospitals, specifically here in Santa Fe. When we first took him in, we took him to a large medical facility where I had previously visited a sick friend. It was your typical hurry up and wait emergency room, crowded and slow, but that was to be expected. When we saw the Doctor the first time, they x-rayed his ankle (where the pain was at that time, deciding nothing was broken) and said it might be gout. They gave him an air splint, some gout medicine and sent him on his way.

A week later, he was noticeably worse, the pain had moved to his knee where he had a lump the size of a small egg, extremely tender, very red and hot to the touch. So we went back to the same emergency room. They performed no tests, basically told us they didn't know for sure, but thought it might be an infection of some sort. Then they put him in a full leg brace and sent us on our way. When we got out to the car, we couldn't even get him in the car with the brace on, so we removed it for the drive home.

At this point I was getting both frightened and disgusted.

He took the meds for a few days with no visible improvement and he still could not walk the ten feet from his chair to the bathroom without using crutches. At this point he hadn't left the rig for close to two weeks except for the two trips to the ER.

I got to talking to some folks here at the park where we're staying and one of them told us they had also had a less than desirable experience at this facility and suggested we try Physicians Medical Center (which we had never heard of).

Wow, what a difference.

The first thing they did was take blood and urine for tests and x-rayed his knee. They informed us that it didn't look like he had any infection, but that he should finish the series of antibiotics anyway, since he was now six days into the series. They also told us that his uric acid levels were indeed elevated, which is a pretty solid indicator of gout.

They gave him pain medication and a five day series of prednisone and within three days he was feeling better. Today we went in for a checkup and he actually was walking without his crutches, with just the teeniest bit of a limp.

The Doctor today said he seems to be well on his way to full recovery, he's feeling very much better and I am one Happy Camper.

I can truthfully once again say that