Popeye and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Well, just when we thought things were quieting down in the ol' Black household here in Sherwood, lo and behold, I found myself out of school for nearly a week and in the hospital for a few days. While I was at school last Monday, my elbow starting tightening up and by early evening, I had a high fever and couldn't get warm. After seeing my primary care physician in Sherwood, she started treating me for an infection, but my arm continued to swell from my elbow to my fingers. If I had drawn an anchor on my right arm with a black Sharpie, it would have been a dead ringer for Popeye's.


By Thursday morning, we decided I was going from bad to worse, so we headed for the emergency room at the Providence Hospital in Newberg, where I was treated for some form of "cellulitus" (infection of the skin). After a couple of I-V's of vancomyacin (a heavy-duty antibiotic used to treat resilient staph infections and such), we finally got the blood test results back and discovered that I actually had a "Group C Strep" form of cellulitis. So, once my temperature stabilized, I was sent home on Saturday with oral penicillin, vicadin, and ibuprofen.

These last couple of months, with all the family health issues, have seemed filled with pestilence and other challenges. When I was laying around in the hospital, I was encouraged by several verses from the Psalms, notably this from Psalm 41:3:

"The Lord nurses them when they are sick and restores them to health."

Tim