April Otwell
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It’s Always Something..

11/27/2022

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Hey guys, I know it’s been a while since the last time I posted and I’m sorry. I will explain everything in this post. For the past few months, I have been dealing with a pressure sore on my butt cheek. On September 5th I noticed a small bruise that continued to decline over the next two days. I spent those two days sweating like a pig, cold, and with a temperature of 102.6 before I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to go to the hospital. They admitted me for the wound that turned out to have been infected. The spot didn’t look horrible at the moment just bruised badly but little did I know that underneath the infection had turned me septic. I had seen the local doctor that said I had a stage one pressure sore and wanted me to just follow up the next week. The hospital did surgery to clean out the wound of dead tissue and to see exactly how bad it was. It turned out to be a stage four pressure sore that was 11 cm deep and about 4 cm wide. I had lost so much weight in the last few months that I only weighed 165 pounds. I wasn’t that small before my injury at fourteen. The weight loss caused my wound; less cushion so the pelvic bone had more pressure to put on the muscles. I spent four days in Cabrini hospital to keep me on antibiotics.
The rest of September and October I spent in my bed on bed rest. The wound got better for a while, getting down to 4 cm deep before the infection came back and things started to turn around and go south. One Monday I went to wound care and they took a scraping of the wounds, but waited until the following Monday to tell me that I had three different types of bacteria growing. I went for a whole week with the infection before the doctor told me. So they put me on oral antibiotics but the infection was too strong by this point. Two weeks went by without any changes in the infection. The next recommendation was to be put in a long term treatment hospital so that wound care and IV antibiotics could be done. I wanted to just do the IV antibiotics at home but according to the wound care nurse at Cabrini said that no home health agency was taking my insurance; Humana. I fought going into the hospital with everything that I had and tried a lot to be able to stay at home but November 1st I was admitted to Cabrini Hospital for a 28 day stay.
The stay at the hospital was horrible. I didn’t get turned properly which is every two hours. I got left alone in my room despite being a full assistance patient for hours without being checked on. I had to teach every one of my nurses about my mitrofanoff. Some of the staff argued with me when I was right the entire time. It was just bad. I want to write everything that happened to me in the hospital but it was so much it might need to be its own blog itself. I’m considering doing a new little section on my website that has reviews of doctors and hospitals. Thoughts?
Despite the lack of care during the first week on antibiotics the wound went from 7 cm deep to 1.5 cm deep which is a huge improvement. A smaller wound on the opposite butt cheek had completely healed too. The second week the wound was measuring only 2 cm wide and 1 cm deep. The hospital let me go home after the infection was gone and the wound was clean enough. I stayed 21 days, and got out November 22nd two days before Thanksgiving.
I spent my Thanksgiving back in my own bed staying off the wound so that I’m able to heal up quickly and hopefully by New Year’s I can finally be off bed rest. I had Thanksgiving dinner delivered to me and ate way to much, like everyone else on Thanksgiving.
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    Paralyzed from the neck down after an ATV rollover at 14, April Otwell is beating the odds the doctors gave her. She's a blogger, fantasy writer, college student, sugar glider guardian and spinal cord injury survivor.  She's even writing her first fiction novel!

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