This year for Christmas I got...cellulitis!

For a couple of months I've had a small patch of scaly skin on my hip between the two incisions. Seeing that it wasn't going away and knowing that another surgery is coming up I decided it was time to do something about it. Hoping it was just dry skin, I gently picked at one spot--just enough to draw a tiny drop of blood--but it wasn't peeling off like dry skin, so I left it.
The next day I went to my primary care doctor to get his opinion. He diagnosed it as dermatitus and he prescribed a topical steroid cream to apply twice a day, to get my immune system to stop overreacting.

The following day we set off on a Christmas trip to Colorado Springs. All my side of the family was meeting up at my sister and brother-in-law's, the first time in four years we've all been together. That morning I started to get congested, and by the time we got off the plane in Denver I had a full-blown sinus/altitude headache.

When we finally arrived at my sister's I looked at my hip--it was bright red halfway down my leg and halfway around my backside, hot and much more sensitive to touch than normal. I assumed it was due to all the activity of the day and figured I'd give it some time. Besides, it was the sinus headache that was making me the most miserable.

Two days later my sinus headache was diminishing but my hip was not improving, so we found a doctor nearby. The doctor and his nurse were both very interested to see me, saying mine was "the most interesting case of the day." The doctor looked at my skin and said very seriously, "I don't want to alarm you, but this could be very serious," diagnosing it as cellulitis, a skin infection. He proceeded to lay out the various options, from just oral antibiotics at best to IV antibiotics in a hospital to surgical intervention if infection collects around the hardware. But first he wanted to give me a big shot of Rocephin to see if the infection would respond to antibiotics. And he instructed me not to use the steroid cream (which I hadn't used yet anyway) on my dermatitus, as the steroids would inhibit the fight against the infection.

So after a warning about it hurting like an injection of peanut butter they jabbed two syringes of Rocephin into my backside (the good side), took some blood, and sent me home with an appointment for the next day.

The Rocephin worked--the skin seemed less hot to touch and the redness seemed to decrease somewhat. The doctor thought the antibiotics were working so he prescribed a combo oral antibiotic for 10 days. My blood work showed a CRP of 145 (with an annotation saying that a value greater than 3.0 was an indication of a future cardiac event), and my sed rate was 40.

Thankfully nothing more invasive was required. I did not want anyone except Dr. Mayo to cut on my hip, so I traded email with Sarah, his PA. She was the first to diagnose call it cellulitis, from a picture I emailed her. She was a superb help throughout the whole ordeal.

(Make a too-long story less long: leave out half a dozen visits to my surgeon, primary care doctor, an urgent care doctor, and a dermatologist...)

Now, after 20 days of Augmentin and about two weeks of using a steroid cream, the redness is almost entirely gone, and the dermatitus is almost entirely gone, leaving behind somewhat darkened pigment.

My surgeon won't operate until my skin's "pristine," which it will hopefully be by my next appointment in a couple of weeks.