An immediate family member of mine (my father) suffered a very severe vehicle collision in Peru (breaking: 8 ribs, humerus, tibia, fibula; however, pretty much everything other than the collision itself has been incredibly lucky (no other fractures, no spinal/cerebral injuries); from their being able to contact their worksite via cellphone for help in spite of their immediate injuries & being able to attend the phone when their call was dropped due to poor signal (an event they will likely never recall due to traumatic amnesia), surviving a 4 hour drive across Andean mountain roads to medical care, to being transferred to a first rate private clinic (instead of staying at a public hospital), miraculously surviving intubation linked pneumonia (the clinic director's words to my family)) about 3 months ago; and was finally discharged from the hospital about a week ago.
At our follow up with our family physician yesterday I finally was told that the fungal infection they are taking
Voriconazole for is for a strain of
Fusarium.
Additionally they are on a daily
Vancomysin IV (750 mg in 250 mL NaCl mix) regimen (our wonderful Canadian public health system sends a nurse daily for this); and have a
VAC (Vacum Assisted Closure) dressing on their tibia to assist with the healing of their remaining wounds.
The concern that my family has is that the Vancomysin and/or Voriconazole prescriptions may continue indefinately; is it legitimate?
Also, our family physician said that the Fusarium infection is in some manner uncommon (it's likely due to the dirt that got into wounds as a result of rolling off a paved road and down a dirt hill); is that cause for long term concern as well? That is to say, is there a high likelihood that they will be on antibiotics and antifungal medication for the rest of their lives? (most healthcare people we've asked haven't been able to answer one way or the other).
There are other legal and health insurance linked concerns, as well. The insurance company mandated that all "non life or death" treatment be not administered for as much as 11 days; and it is most likely that the Fusarium infection took hold during that time period. Additionally, the Ontario WSIB (Workplace Safety & Insurance Board; a provincial employee insurance institution) is involved, as this injury happened as a result of employment; our family still hasn't signed off on allowing them to sue whoever they need to (and from what the scant legal council we took, it's likely they'll go after someone we don't expect).
Finally, there's the issue of recuperation. Spending five weeks in the first stage of treatment, being uselessly transferred and kept immobile for two weeks before being transfered to a more local hospital, and then only a few more weeks in a hospital's rehabilitation floor; resulted in obvious loss of baseline stamina and body mass. We've were supplementing the hospital diet with
high protein vegetable multi-vitamin powder; as well as using Pumpkin seed powder, Hemp seed powder and Brown Rice powder (my brother picked up from the Whole Foods they work at; they've been a vegetarian/vegan weightlifter for about a decade now) to help maintain a high level of protein to rebuild muscle mass. In many ways the supplements to my father's diet have helped (the VAC dressed wound seemed to not have healed very much until after he was getting about 1L of these shakes taken to him daily, but that could be coincidental); and he's actually put on some muscle mass (still very skinny; but he's regaining some portion of the 50+ lbs he lost). Are there other recommendations for diet or exercise that might also help? I've been assisting them with completing the exercises their Physiotherapist outlined; but I've been also showing them the flexion-and-holding exercises that I used to add four inches to my chest (going from 36" to 40" in 3~ months); and I'm considering adding resistance training (yes, weightlifting, but I'd likely start them off with the 1/3 lb locking nut I used to keep the plates on my barbell than an actual weight plate); would resistance training be a useful addition to Physiotherapy?
I'm sorry if this is not a single question, and is instead of a lot of tangentially related questions concerning a specific issue. However it's also sort of a big deal that's made our family change everything else we're doing in order to assist in my father's convalescence (he wants to get back to work, even if taking a shower right now involves an assistant; and their corporations national projects supervisors came to visit them at the hospital telling him they looked forward to putting him into a desk position (no driving on mountain roads) when they recovered).