For the past 15 years, I have collected a team of the wisest medical minds I can find to help me with a right arm that is today behaving very badly. I can candidly say that today – right now – it is in the biggest mess it has ever been and that, as 2008 comes to a close, I’m a lot worse off than when the year started.

So, yesterday I did something that is so very distasteful to me that as I drove out-of-town well before daybreak, I actually cried for a minute. My current crowd of doctors and nurses is huge, and I know each and every one cares about me, so turning my back on them after all they’ve gone through made me further nauseated, but, Lord knows, I’ve got to do something.

Now the best doctors in the world, I have found, actually like what they call “a second opinion” and are not threatened by it. It makes great sense when things are going badly, too, because “Doctor A” is always interested in what “Doctor B” has to say.

Look at it this way. You and I are on one side of the city and decide to meet somewhere all the way across town. Since we are both driving our own cars, we end up using different routes, but both arrive at the destination about the same time. Obviously neither of us is wrong in the directions we took, but are both interested to learn if there is a “better way” to go about it.

This year I have had 28 surgeries on my arm. People who love me say that is ludicrous, but you have to know most have been “wash-outs,” where they take you back to the operating room at the end of the day to wash away new infection and repack the wound with fresh antibiotics. One time I had six washouts in eight days, and the side effects – not eating or walking while enduring anesthesia drugs, pain drugs and all else - makes you long for the grave.

Further, I don’t believe the crowd I have been leaning on has done anything wrong. Oh, a lot has gone wrong, but I don’t think anybody is at fault. How do you blame an infection for starting, one that wiggled into the wound in the “hole” the hypodermic needle left when we aspirated all that gunk out of my elbow cavity?

Whose fault is it I’ve got osteomylitis? This infection can lie dormant for years until a foreign body, like a metal screw or a plate to hold the bones together, is installed and then the disease comes roaring out like a bunch of Somalian pirates.

You see, antibiotics just work on living tissue so these germs hang around on the steel plate, or any other foreign body that the antibiotics don’t touch, and then start partying hard again when the antibiotics stop. In short, the only way you treat it is to take the extra parts out when you start the antibiotics.

When my osteomylitis gets excited, it brings a satchel of “staph” and another of “strep.” What is going to happen now that I’ve got a fungal infection called Candida, a killer called MRSA and probably a viral infection called “c. diff.?” In other words, will these now join the osteomylitis menu? No one is quite sure.

Early this week one of the finest people in our neighborhood, a wonderful guy who would bring dog biscuits to my animals on his daily walks because I always had a pocket full for his, died of MRSA. That wasn’t lost on me, not at all, since I’ve got the same stuff. And one of the biggest reasons I sought out this new doctor yesterday – an orthopedic oncologist in Nashville – is because when things go awry as they did for my neighbor, you need the wizards in a hurry.

Well, the new doctor is a wonderful man. He’s seen a lot of people suffer and die and doesn’t like it. So when I show up, with all the different problems that come with my arm, he admits he’s never seen anything like it, but doesn’t suggest we have a “terminal” situation either.

Instead, he wants to study dozens of new X-rays, talk to his colleagues and other medical experts he knows, then to try to formulate a plan. He made great sense, and I liked him a lot. We’re going to talk a lot in the weeks ahead.

But when I was driving home yesterday afternoon, feeling lousy with the infections and gulping Tylenol for my aching arm, I couldn’t help but think about my other crowd, the ones who have stuck by me through thick and thin, and what on earth I was going to say if, indeed, I do change horses. Lordy, those people have done so much for me.

But as I sit in the night’s darkness, what do I have to show for it? I’m really sick, and I’ve got to do something about it in a pretty big hurry. What’s worse, there is a lot riding on making the right decision. You talk about praying for wisdom – are you kidding me?

royexum@aol.com