NF Survivor - Larry Newkirk

Larry Newkirk's Survivor Story

My name is Larry Newkirk and I live in the San Diego area. My symptoms began as a slight pain in my lower left rib. In one day it became very painful and was followed by a fever that ran between 102 and 104. This began on a wed morning by wed evening the fever started. on friday morning at 2 am I called an ambulance and went to the ER only to have them tell me I had plurisy in my left chest wall. I was given norco and sent home friday morning 6 am. Saturday morning I woke up to see my left side was very distended but I figured it was just the plurisy and continued to take my pain meds. On Sunday morning the pain was just too much to bear and my neighbor stopped in an saw my and insisted I go back to the ER. I wasn't going to but I finally could not stand the pain any longer so I called an ambulance a second time.

I remember going hours with no pain meds because they said my blood pressure was too low and then after a contrast cat scan I noticed alot of activity and being hooked up to multiple IV's. I don't remember anything from Sunday Afternoon till the next wed when I woke up in ICU. I spent a whole week in ICU then another week in a room hooked up to bag after bag of antibiotics.

What I was told was I had apparently broken a rib that had turned into an abscess and the abscess turned into both MRSA staph and necrotizing fasciitis. This resulted in sepsis and they had to remove the rib along with the infected tissue surrounding the infected area.There is a good sized open wound on my left side that a nurse comes to my home every other day to change the dressing and place a new canister on my wound vac. I have only been out of the hospital for 3 days so hopefully this will not come back and I will recover in a few months.

Larry Newkirk
todum2come@yahoo.com
San Diego, California, USA
May 2008

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