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I am home, with home-based intravenous antibiotics. We start infusing through a Tunnelling PICC line in the upper right corner of my chest Sunday morning shortly after 10am. Wish us luck.

My white blood cell count is down, from 15.2 to 11.9. I'm going home today, barring any last minute screwups. End of line.

Well, smeg. I'm stuck in the hospital for another night. Saw my podiatrist this evening and learned that my white blood cell count had jumped from 12 to 15 overnight. He's keeping me to see if it goes down in the morning. If it does, he'll let me go home. If not...well, we'll come to that if it happens.

I also learned that family Christmas has been temporarily postponed due to illness of several of the hosting family members. Looks like I'm not the only one sick, although I am the only one in the hospital. It'll be rescheduled soon.

In the latest twist to the osteomyelitis saga, it looks like I might get to go home today after all. I've still got to get a PICC line inserted while I'm unconscious, have IV drugs delivered to my house, and figure out who's going to be doing what and going where over the next few days. I may be riding down to Austin with a tennis ball full of cefepime infusing into me en route. Stay tuned.

I've finally met with the infectious disease doctor, and there has been a bit of a revision to the story. Here goes.

Once the bone biopsy sample decalcified, parts of it were sent to two different labs - pathology and microbiology. Pathology studied it under the microscope and determined that it had been subjected to acute osteomyelitis. Microbiology tried to grow cultures from it, but since I'd been on antibiotics for over 5 days already, nothing new grew, so they were unable to determine exactly what kind of organism was causing the osteomyelitis.

As a result, I'm going to have to remain on the two broad-spectrum IV antibiotics I'm already on...for 6 weeks. I'm not going home any time soon. I'll most likely be sent to another Skilled Nursing Center, LTAC, or something similar. I'm pretty sure of the place I'll go - I've been there twice before.

So much for family Christmas. Sigh.

I have been told by my hospital doctor this morning that my bone biopsy has shown signs of growth in the medium. In short, I have osteomyelitis.

How this is going to affect my schedule is uncertain right now. They still don't know what kind of infection I have in my bone, but in any case it's going to require IV antibiotics. I might be able to go home with them, but it's doubtful. I'll find out more when I see the infectious diseases doctor later today.

No idea how this is going to affect family Christmas yet. Sigh.

My right foot and my lower right leg are closer to normal, thanks to the 1-2 punch of the vancomycin and the cefepime. Meanwhile, the bone biopsy sample continues to show no growth in the lab, according to the doctors. If this continues through Wednesday, I may be able to come home Thursday with just a prescription for oral antibiotics instead of IV antibiotics. This would allow my wife and myself to go down to the family Christmas get-together in the Georgetown (north of Austin) area this weekend, making my wife extremely happy. ;) Only time will tell.

I'm in the queue for more surgery, Sunday morning. The podiatrist isn't happy with the pain I'm still having and thinks there may still be hidden abscesses, so he's going to go in and find out. He'll check out the bottom of my foot, and the inner side of my big toe. I'm hoping he cleans out whatever he finds.

I am in the hospital with an infection in my right foot. It has swollen up out of control, especially my big toe. The doctors have been giving me powerful antibiotics (Zosyn and Vancomycin), but they're not working. My podiatrist came in today, drained the big toe, and sent off the fluid for a culture. He also ordered a CT scan on my foot to see if there were any additional pockets of infection hidden away that he needs to cut out. We're still working on this, with no end in sight yet.