My Dad..

Sorry again for the lack of posts but we've had a lot going on!

My dad was taken to hospital a week ago. He suffers from gout. Gout is a form of arthritis that comes and goes. My dad has one of the worst cases the hospital has ever seen. So bad that he's actually been photographed for trainee doctors and fully qualified doctors to study. 

A bit of a back story to this year. My dad has big lumps the size of tennis balls on his joints due to gout. He had it on one knee, his both elbows, his toes and his knuckles are starting to go out of shape. At the start of this year he was having trouble with the one on his knee. One day the skin on his knee turned black indicating that it was dead. Then it pretty much exploded. Like a giant spot (gross, I know). He had to go to hospital to have it drained completely. Because the skin and muscle was dead he had to have it cut away leaving a hole in his knee right down to the bone. He had a few operations on it and ended up with plastic surgery for a skin graft. It still hasn't 100% covered up. He was at work last week and fell on his knee and burst the hole open again. 
The day after this happened he had excruciating pain in his hand and arm. So, off to the hospital he went again. They had to drain the gout that had turned septic from his hand with a couple of operation. But they also discovered that when he fell he got dirt deep in his knee wound causing blood poisoning. 

His hand is in a terrible mess. It looks like a someone's blown up a rubber glove and is bright red. They're doing everything they can to try and get to the bottom of it but nothing seems to be working. He's on super strong antibiotics for his blood poisoning but he also has a kidney infection, MSSA (a form of MRSA that causes blistering of the skin) and another infection that was picked up for the hospital. So, he's in a poor state.  

I really hope he gets better soon. It's horrible knowing he's stuck in the hospital and can't leave until all his infections are cleared.