Why I’ve Not Been To Work Lately (Or: Nasty Pictures of the Crap With My Legs)

Why, you might have noticed that I’ve not talked a lot about my health since back in December.

Er. Yeah.

Please note that this cute picture of my cat is your warning to back out now.

So back in December, I had a hypertensive crisis that led to some weird dots and inflammation and one infected area.

Apparently those areas are a type of pupura rash, caused by (in this case) the inflammation and irritation of the blood vessels due to the high blood pressure. It’s conjectured – though my docs have all pretty much said we’ll never know for sure – that the chest pain and elevated heart rate I had the next day was further irritation and inflammation.

But my heart’s fine, and while both my BP and heart rate are a little higher than I’d like, that’s not what has me benched.

Think about this for a second – see those wide red splotchy areas on my legs from back in December? Those were leaked blood from inflamed and irritated blood vessels. Which means those turned into giant blood blisters, first on my left leg, and then on my right.

And then last Wednesday night/early Thursday morning, it suddenly got a lot worse, with redness and swelling in my right leg in particular, and a lot more pain.

So my doc told me to stay home and off that leg for a week, and for the most part, I’ve been doing so.  This is from earlier this morning, and you can see it’s marginally better than it was last week, but still not great.

Those raw areas and scabs are a complete lack of epidermis – it’s just raw dermis there, which let me tell you, sucks the big one.  And it’s been a lot less fun than you’d think; the medications I’m on are actually zonking me out most of the time, so I’m not getting things done except making it harder to sleep on my regular sleep schedule.

But – and here’s the one big benefit – I’ve hardly had to deal with socks or pants brushing or rubbing against those huge raw areas.  And that is definitely a blessing.