My daughter Megan gave birth on Feb 10th by C-section. Everything seemed fine when we went home a few days later on Friday. But not for long. She started running fever even though she was taking 800 mg of Motrin and Tylonel Number 3 for pain. I made her call the OB on Monday morning and she went into see her. Her stomach was very swollen, more pain then you would expect, fever and felt crappy. She said Megan had a uterine infection and told her the conservative thing to do would be to hospitalize her but she decided to let her take antibiotics at home for a few days. Her temp continued to spike so they hospitalized her and they were giving her IV antibiotics. On Friday morning with fever spiking over 103 and her stomach very hard they called in an Infectios Disease OB/Gyn specialist. He stuck a needle into her incision and withdrew a sample to culture. They also did a CAT scan. It showed a large mass on her abdominal wall- a hematoma which is a blood filled clot. He came back and bluntly told us that Megan had the worst bacteria Clostidium and also two other Strep bacteria. That this was very serious and that the bacteria would be eating away at her insides. The good news was that it was not on her organs only the abdominal wall. But they had to take her to surgery now and he said it would be a hard road and she was in serious trouble. They asked her if she had a living will and who she wanted to have the baby if she didn't survive. So completely unexpected and the most fightening thing to hear. I was alone because she lives in a different city and my family wasn't there. I texted my husband and just told him she had a serious bacteria and they were doing surgery. I didn't want him driving like a crazy man if he knew what he really said. Then I called my son and lost it, poor kid, but he has a biology/chem degree and I knew he would know about it and understand my extreme fear. I also called my go to person my SIL and lost it again. I wanted them all to be there so bad, being alone is awful. Then I couldn't find her husband. I called cell and work with no luck. So finally thought to call his dad and he went to his work and told him. The doctor came back a couple of hours later and said she had Necrotizing Fasciitis and they had to remove all the dead tissue and they put a graft of pig intestine material to help promote the fascia cells to grow. They leave the wound open so that it heals from the inside out. She seemed fine when she got out of recovery but then her blood pressure dropped and they put in a PICC line and gave her a blood transfusion. She was in ICU for four days and while she was feeling awful she didn't do to bad about not seeing the baby, but after a few days when she felt stronger she just got so upset about not having the baby. It was so sad to see her so sick and crying for her baby. When she finally got to hold Sophie it was such a heart warming sight (picture above). They kept her for two weeks counting the ICU time and then we finally got to go home. I thought everything was fine and all she had to do was wait for the wound to heal but the morning we left he told her she wasn't out of the woods yet. So now this very nervous Mom is crazy with worry. She's gone 5 days with no temp at all so I figure everyday with no temp has to be good. Can't wait for several months to go by so I can loose this ball of fear in my stomach. But I've had time to think about some of the decisions we make with out thinking when we go into surgery. Megan allowed students in during her C-section and donated her cord blood which required that person to be in her surgery, and while it seems like the right thing to do I now think I would never allow anyone besides the needed personel in the operating room. Additional people add up to additional risk of infection. We will never know why or how she aquired the bacteria but I assume it was from the hospital. Having stayed almost three weeks at that hospital I watched nurses not follow procedure about 5% of the time. Most do everything they should but not all of them. Some didn't flush her PICC line before or after using it. Some would clean her wound with gloves and leave them on searching for more sterile material with dirty gloves. I saw one use a cotton swab that had already touched the wound and contaminate the tube of petrolium jelly that they put around the edges of the wound. My dad's a vet and he wouldn't do that on a dog. So while 95% of the time it's done correctly it's not hard to believe that maybe the day the OR was cleaned for Megan's C-section someone didn't do it correctly. But there is not much you can do about it but thank God she's here and didn't have anything worse than she did. It's an awful bacteria and she was actually very lucky.
