Josh’s story

I really dislike hospitals. I say dislike because I don’t hate them but I honestly really have an issue with them and there is a story behind this. About two years ago at the end of my sophomore year in high school I developed a serious case of lyme disease. For those who don’t know Lyme disease according to the official Wikipedia opinion is the most common tick-borne disease in the Northern Hemisphere which is transmitted through a deer tick bite. Once a deer tick bites you, you develop a bullseye rash around the area which I didn’t notice at the time of the bite. So a few months later my leg swelled up so much that I could barely walk on it which is actually a late stage symptom of Lyme. So to make a longer story short I was brought into the hospital after a month or so of taking medication that didn’t work so that they could drain whatever was in my leg preventing it from getting smaller once again. The operation went well and they discharged me from the hospital with a pic line which is basically a portable IV to take more medication all the times. Funny enough the doctors put it in wrong so about ten days later I developed a fever which isn’t normal. The doctors at my local hospital couldn’t figure it out so we went to CHOP, the best childrens hospital around. They quickly diagnosed the fever as what I said above and removed the pic line. To spare tremendous detail lets just say the next year went fine. Then after a year the same thing happened again. My leg swelled up and I ended up going into the hospital again. This time wasn’t the same as the first time however in that this time what had happened is that something had torn when I had jumped from the stitching up of my leg in the last surgery. They had to operate again and drain what was in my leg but this time they decided to let my leg heal in a very different way. Normally the way surgeries go is that they operate, stitch you up and your body heals from the outside in. but, in order to prevent what had just occurred, the doctors decided to let the wound heal from the inside out. After a few months of treating the wound until it closed everything got back to normal. What I have to remember is about one inch of scar on my leg, basically no feeling around my calf and the sound of something cracking whenever I squat and then straighten up. Also it was my right leg. That is why I dislike hospitals and for those who stuck through the blood, I applaude you.

this is a drawing I did posting it just because