I wanted to write this in the hope of keeping someone else from having to go through what I’ve had to go through in the last month.
As I had mentioned in the Tips for Weekend Warrior Restorers thread, on March 18 I was trying to finish a long day of work on the coupe and slipped off a small ladder while getting out of the engine bay and my leg got thrown against a part of the front suspension. It got lacerated either by the lug bolts or the brake disk dust shield. (Wheel was off)
Blood rushed out, so my wife took me to the Emergency room. There they cleaned it and put 14 stitches to close it up.
The policy in hospitals these days is to clean as well as possible but not use antibiotics automatically because they have been overprescribed and too many resistances are developing.
Problem with this “cross your fingers” approach is that it doesn’t always work. Four days later I started developing some redness around the wound indicating an infection. So I went to the doc and they gave me some mild antibiotics. Three days later it was getting worse. So another doc gave me some stronger ones. A week later it wasn’t getting any better so they switched again.
The doc then told me that wounds on the lower legs are actually very difficult to heal because they are far from the heart and therefore blood flow is not as good.
Ten days ago they decided I needed to switch to shots of meds instead of oral ones. This is a powerful antibiotic that is shot in the hip muscle. It is very painful and makes it difficult to walk for 24 hours. But I was getting them every day, alternating sides, so no chance to recover. It makes everything hard including sleep because you can’t turn on your side. I had to start missing days of work because my leg had to be elevated as much as possible.
In all I saw 5 doctors and was on 6 different antibiotics for a month. Finally last night my temperature started to rise. This is a warning sign when you are on these meds so I had to go to the ER. This morning I find myself in a hospital bed with an IV to try and fight this. I’ll be here for at least 2 or 3 days.
All of that to say that, when you are tired and pissed off because everything on a car restoration takes longer than you thought and you’re trying to finish as much as possible, you tend to loose your normal sense of alertness and you are less careful then you should be. And at that point it doesn’t take much for small things to go wrong and then mushroom into something much bigger that can derail the whole project.
This can get even way worse as reported by bfeng in the above thread. So let us all remember that car restoration will always take longer than you think and as soon as you get tired, alarm bells should start to go off and say “Time to either call it a day or to get extra alert because everything is becoming progressively more dangerous.”
When working around things than are much harder and sharper than your body, stay on full alert at all times, friends! A few days delay is soooo much better than more than a month of pain and, adding insult to injury, the accompanying medical bills that are coming with it.
As I had mentioned in the Tips for Weekend Warrior Restorers thread, on March 18 I was trying to finish a long day of work on the coupe and slipped off a small ladder while getting out of the engine bay and my leg got thrown against a part of the front suspension. It got lacerated either by the lug bolts or the brake disk dust shield. (Wheel was off)
Blood rushed out, so my wife took me to the Emergency room. There they cleaned it and put 14 stitches to close it up.
The policy in hospitals these days is to clean as well as possible but not use antibiotics automatically because they have been overprescribed and too many resistances are developing.
Problem with this “cross your fingers” approach is that it doesn’t always work. Four days later I started developing some redness around the wound indicating an infection. So I went to the doc and they gave me some mild antibiotics. Three days later it was getting worse. So another doc gave me some stronger ones. A week later it wasn’t getting any better so they switched again.
The doc then told me that wounds on the lower legs are actually very difficult to heal because they are far from the heart and therefore blood flow is not as good.
Ten days ago they decided I needed to switch to shots of meds instead of oral ones. This is a powerful antibiotic that is shot in the hip muscle. It is very painful and makes it difficult to walk for 24 hours. But I was getting them every day, alternating sides, so no chance to recover. It makes everything hard including sleep because you can’t turn on your side. I had to start missing days of work because my leg had to be elevated as much as possible.
In all I saw 5 doctors and was on 6 different antibiotics for a month. Finally last night my temperature started to rise. This is a warning sign when you are on these meds so I had to go to the ER. This morning I find myself in a hospital bed with an IV to try and fight this. I’ll be here for at least 2 or 3 days.
All of that to say that, when you are tired and pissed off because everything on a car restoration takes longer than you thought and you’re trying to finish as much as possible, you tend to loose your normal sense of alertness and you are less careful then you should be. And at that point it doesn’t take much for small things to go wrong and then mushroom into something much bigger that can derail the whole project.
This can get even way worse as reported by bfeng in the above thread. So let us all remember that car restoration will always take longer than you think and as soon as you get tired, alarm bells should start to go off and say “Time to either call it a day or to get extra alert because everything is becoming progressively more dangerous.”
When working around things than are much harder and sharper than your body, stay on full alert at all times, friends! A few days delay is soooo much better than more than a month of pain and, adding insult to injury, the accompanying medical bills that are coming with it.
