The Next Day
Remember we were in Honduras and leaving this area the next day. We had various concerns: ? necrosis of distal finger tips, possible compartment type syndrome of the hand due to obvious swelling and severe pain, secondary bacterial infection, or possible autoimmune problems.
We had limited medications but did give 1 gram of Rocephin, 40mg of prednisone , 20mg of tramadol q 6 hrs for pain. The morning before we left we got to see our patient before getting on our school bus to leave. She was much better, smiling , happy , and obviously better. This is the photo at that time. It may not look very different and doesn't to me now, but the patient looked much better.
What can we credit with the improvement? Antibiotics, steroids, analgesics ?? I am not sure but I think the steroids probably helped the most.
Labels: medicine
2 Comments:
Yeah that looks better to me. I agree that the steroids probably did most of the work there.
Several interesting things about this case. Definite shingles but 23 days out, severe pain in hand especially in the ulnar distribution(good observation anonymous), and the apparent finger tip necrosis. All these made us ponder how to treat apparent complications of shingles.
Hopefully we got the right load in our shotgun.
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