Narrative Essay

One awful experience

About two years ago I went through one of the worst experiences of my life. At the time I was working as a medical assistant at a doctor's office. One day a patient came in for treatment for a Staph infection. The word staph is short for Staphylococcus, which is a bacteria that in most cases lives harmlessly on many skin surfaces, but sometimes it can cause a minor to serious skin infection which would need medical treatment. The patient had come in on a Friday for treatment. I remember after he left I was upset and disgusted because the infection was on his hands and he had no bandages or covering over it. He should have been more considerate of others, especially since he worked in the medical field and most likely knew that staph can be passed through contact with objects also. He had walked around the office, touch things such as door knobs, chairs, magazines, and used the restroom. I wished the doctor would have said something to him. That Saturday I developed a bump on my face. It was right at the start of my left eye brow. At first I though nothing of it, I brushed it off as a skin blemish or a pimple. On Sunday I started to get worried. The bump had gotten bigger. It was very hard and painful. That day my family had come over, they were morning the loss of my grandfather. I remember I kept going in the bathroom checking my face. By the evening the area where the bump was had started to swell up. I put my bangs over it to cover it. On the outside I was calm and collected, on the inside I was nervous and worried. That night after my family had left I had my fiancee, who was my boyfriend at the time take me to the hospital. The doctor took a culture, prescribed antibiotics, and gave me a Vicodin tablet for the pain before I left the hospital. He said he didn't want to give a diagnosis till the test results were back from the culture. He also advised me to follow up with my regular physician in the next two days. On the drive home from the hospital I remember feeling nauseous. Once I got in the house I ran to the bathroom. I had never taken Vicodin before and I guess it didn't agree with my stomach. I vomited about eight to ten times. I thought the worst was over. It had to be, what else could happen?
The next morning I woke up and opened my eyes, but only my right one opened. I closed my right eye and again attempted to open both my eyes, but again just the right one opened. I jump out of bed and ran to the mirror. My left eye was almost completely swollen shut, the left side of my face and some of the right side were also swollen. I became hysterical, I couldn't stop crying I called my fiancee and my physician. My fiancee picked me up and drove me to the doctor's office in Fremont that morning. I wore a baseball cap really low over my eyes, so no one could see my face. I was mortified. The doctor saw me, she said I did probably have a staph infection and the infection had turned into an abscess. The abscess was causing the swelling. Normally when a patient has an abscess the doctor can cut and drain it, but because my abscess was right by my eye she didn't want to take any chances, she said it was too risky. The doctor left us in the room to make some phone calls. I sat there and just cried and cried while my fiancee tried to console me. When the doctor came back in the room, she told me she had arranged an appointment for me to see a plastic surgeon in Palo Alto that afternoon.
We left for Palo Alto to see the plastic surgeon. I was exhausted, fatigued from not eating and crying some much, and I was so incredibly worried. When the surgeon came into the room he introduced himself and began to examine my face. He told me there was a possibility I could lose my sight in my left eye. He put on some gloves and tried to squeeze the abscess to see if it would drain at all. The pain was immense, I squeezed on my fiancee's hand every time the surgeon touched my face. The abscess wasn't draining, so the surgeon said he would have to do minor surgery right then and there. They led me to another room. My fiancee couldn't come in with me. I changed into a gown and laid down on the table. The surgeon and his assistant came back in the room. They cleaned and sterilized the area of my face that he would be cutting. After cleaning it he told me he would have to numb it with some local anesthetic. He mentioned that numbing part would be more painful than the cutting part and to brace myself for the pain. The first time he stuck the needle into the affected area I almost passed out. He stuck the needle in about ten more times. He had to make sure the area was numbed well. Each time hurt more than the last. I remember laying there and asking God to just take me now, the pain was so intense that I didn't want to go through it anymore. My face was already so inflamed and in pain and to then be stuck over and over by a needle was excruciating. I wanted to scream, I wanted him to stop he finally did. They left the room for about twenty minutes to let the medicine take affect. I was alone in the room crying and in complete agony. The surgeon came back and cut and drained the abscess. By the time he was done I was so weak and numb from the medicine and the pain. My fiancee had to help me walk to the car. Over the next couple days, the pain slowly went away, my eye opened up and the abscess kept draining till there was nothing left. I finished my antibiotics and the swelling was almost completely gone before I returned to work. I had missed four days of work. I also missed the wake for my grandfather. I didn't even have a chance to grieve for him. Whether the infection was caused by that careless patient or an ingrown hair or something else I'll never know. I take precautions now, I try not to touch my face unless I have to, I use paper towels or my sleeve to open or close doors so I wont have to touch the knobs. I avoid touching a lot of things now. I never want to experience an event like that ever again.