What is it with people neglecting themselves lately? Mental illness is a powerful thing. We had a 50ish year old man tonight who was admitted with a severe infection in his leg. Not just a part of his leg...his whole leg. He had had surgery on his knee roughly six months ago and had been wearing a walking boot type device....sounds reasonable, right?
He never took the flipping boot off.
Like, ever...for six months...
So the zipper on the boot grew into his leg.
Can you see where this is going?
His entire leg (foot to hip) was horribly infected. It essentially was rotting away with gangrene. If you've never smelled gangrene before...well, just be glad because it is not pleasant. This poor guy's leg turned into a flipping zombie leg, with chunks of raw flesh literally falling off while we were trying to care for him.
How did it get this bad, you ask? We don't really know, and neither did he.
Denial. Not wanting to admit there was a problem. Not wanting to admit that his own self neglect caused it. Truly unbelievable, but oh so true.
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