Becca Jane St Clair

It’s not yet been a week since my surgery, but the nurse I see at the GP practice is amazed at how well it’s healing up. There’s barely any packing in it at all today, and she thinks that by the end of the week I’ll be able to just change the dressing on my own.

There is no sign of any infection either.

From the amount of packing pulled out last Thursday, and the results of my ultrasound, I know the infection ran really deep, so it’s quite a relief to have it all out. The fact that I’m healing super fast just goes to show how much better it was to finally cut out the infection instead of keep on shoving various antibiotics down my throat. I don’t blame the GP at all – I know surgery is always the last option, but when I had been dealing with this problem since December 2009….seems to me like surgery should have been obvious to the GP. But anyway. It’s happened and it’s gone, so that’s all that matters.

Since December 2009, when I first saw a doctor about this problem, here’s the breakdown of meds:

10 weeks of various antibiotics, each one getting stronger than the previous one
20 weeks on a combination antibiotic/steroid cream (used it every other week though, so I suppose only 10 weeks)
9 Months + on Zineryt (5 months to get rid of initial infections, currently using it to keep infections at bay)

I have an open office document about to spill onto it’s fifth page documenting everything related to the armpit infections, including every single visit to the nurse or GP. Since December 2009 I have had 16 GP appointments because of this problem and 30 nurse appointments (and counting). 4 visits to the After Hours GP, and one visit to A&E. It took the visit to A&E to get the problem sorted out once and for all (at least, we hope!).

If I get another infection in the other armpit, I think I’m going to just ask them for surgery right away. A week or two of recovering from surgery is so much better than constantly being on antibiotics and creams and having ugly colourful goo coming out of my armpits — I ruined MANY shirts in the past year and a half thanks to this mess!

Also, for those of you in the UK – don’t forget about prescription pre-payment. I just filled out the forms and paid for three months for £29 and with everything I had to pick up today I nearly broke even. (there’s also a yearly option for £104) It’s a good option if you have to pay for prescriptions and know you will be put on several at once.

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