Infectious Diseases Specialist

I went to see the infectious diseases specialist that my reconstruction surgeon recommended. I was hoping that this doctor could say for sure whether or not this is an infection. She couldn’t. But she said we should treat it as an infection anyway and prescribed higher doses of antibiotics to be administered intravenously. So now I have to go to the hospital three times a day to be put on an IV drip for the next three days.

I told the doctor that the swelling had gone down quite a bit overnight and perhaps that’s due to my using the right arm and chest muscles less over the past few days. So maybe it’s ripped scar tissue after all and not an infection. I also pointed out that I haven’t had a fever the entire time this has been going on, but she said that not all infections are accompanied by fever. She said ideally, she’d like to put me in the hospital for 4-5 days and put me on IV drips of both antibiotics I’m now taking orally, but since I don’t want to spend my holiday in a hospital, we’ll try me on the 3-times-a-day hospital trips for just one of the antibiotics to start and see what happens.

So now I’m getting:
Augmentin - 1.2 gm by IV drip, three times a day.

This infectious diseases specialist knows infections. So she’ll treat this as an infection, whether it is or not.

A friend of mine told me about a Japanese saying: If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.