The only medication I had for pain in the house was Tylenol. The doctors sent me home with the anti-fungal meds that were supposed to be treating the “Valley Fever” I supposedly was fighting.
After my mom spoke with the doctors on the phone, we rushed to the ED. I just remember screaming in the waiting room. All I could feel was burning pain; like something was trying to claw itself out of my body.
Once I got back to my own room, I just remember being pumped full of pain meds until I finally passed out or at least blacked out. I went into surgery later that day. To the doctor’s surprise, there was a necrotizing pneumonia that had been brewing in my lung (not the regular pneumonia they initially thought it was) and was now attacking my insides and eating away at the lower left lobe as well as the muscle, fascia, and skin on my left side.
This pneumonia is also known as Necrotizing Fasciitis, an extremely rare flesh eating disease. There are fewer than 20,000 cases per year. During the exploratory surgery, I lost all the infected skin on my left side and the lower lobe of my left lung.
I woke up 3 days later hooked up to all kinds of machines, a tube down my throat, and a device called a wound vac. This basically is a device that vacuum seals wounds to assist in the healing process. It decreases air pressure around the wound and speeds up healing.
I don’t remember waking up, but I do remember my family being there when I did. I would write to them since I couldn’t speak because of the tube in my throat.
All I knew during that time was that I survived a flesh eating disease and an emergency lobectomy. Everything was foggy and confusing. I was suddenly in critical condition and there was not an end in sight.
Dear Vasculitis 