Rose,

I agree with Kelly and what she said. My prayers are with your sister. I
hope this finally gets resolved. She has been suffering with this too too
long.

No Kelly, she went to Kamloops this time, and the surgeon seems very
good. He is one of our South African docs. It is a problem when a job
is botched because sometimes other docs will not touch it with a ten
foot pole. This doc seems to be checking into everything really well.
I will give her your regards.
Thanks.
    Rose   @}>->--
    Being educated means that rather than fearing the unknown, one seeks to understand it. RB

    Please remove "Ima" to reply.

Hi, Rose,

Pardon me for coming in late on this thread, but I've been "out
of commission" for a few weeks from one nasty fall, then one stupid fall!

Just the other day at the pain doc's waiting room, I ran into a fairly young
woman (she looked about 30) who was dealing with infections like
your sister's, but hers were in both hips!  Yeouch!

For whatever reason, she had both hips replaced when she was
about 25, and did really well until late last year, when she got an
infection (traveled from somewhere else in her body) in her right hip.
She was hospitalized on major antibiotics, and the original device
was removed, and she was either jointless or had some kind of "puck"
for a while.

They were successful in killing off the infection, and then giving her
yet another right hip joint.  But the infection managed to travel to her
OTHER hip in the meantime. (Why they could stop it in one hip and
not the other is a puzzlement to me.)

When I met her, she was a couple of months into a new bunch of
antibiotics, with the old replacement hip still in place.  They had
taken a different tack with the infection in the left side, and briefly
knocked her out so they could get a needle into the joint to biopsy
the infected tissue, and at the same time, inject bunches of antibiotics
directly into the joint area.  I 'think' she said they'd sedated her
and injected the anti-b's twice.  They never removed the fake joint
on that left side, left it in place while they were treating her, and
they were now satisfied that the infection was a done deal.  And she
was about to be sent into surgery again to remove the old one, debride
the area, and if it looked as clean as they thought it should, give her
yet another left knee joint.

Man, what an ordeal!  Your sister's problems are just as mind-boggling
as this girl's, and from talking to her, I got an idea of just how hard
this has been on your sister.  But I wanted to pass along this chance
encounter to you, so that it might help you or your sister, because
it actually helped *me*!  I've got a THR and a TKR coming soon,
and, instead of grossing me out, her story woke me up to problems
that *I* might face, that I had been blithely ignoring.  These surgeries
are no walk in the park.

So give your sister my very best wishes and a BIG hug, and tell her
that there IS a light at the end of the tunnel, and it ain't the train. :-)

Hugs to you both,
Ginnie     >^..^<

bummer about the falls, sweetie. hope you're doing much better now.

you're absolutely right.  we shouldn't be cavalier or blithe about any
surgery, even minor ones.  i remember how, at 23, i didn't think my first
leg surgery was going to be a big deal--until many surgeries and many years
later, to heal up from it all, changed my mind.  now, i have to warn any
surgeon, even for minor surgery, about the dormant infection in my body that
could be disasterous if it was activated again by a surgery.  and too, now i
always have to go through a preventative course of abx before any surgery.
major infections are no joyful experience.

kate
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RoseB wrote: