After enduring 4 days of some of the worst pain I’ve ever had…I group it along with bad hip pain throughout the years as well as kidney stones I was damn ecstatic to see the Wound Care center for my appointment on Tuesday. I told my nurse (she’s usually the main person I deal with) about everything that had gone on over the weekend. I took off my pants, lay on my left hip and she looked at it “eeew that looks really, pissed and angry”. I love her. Lol. She poured a bottle of lidocaine on me – it didn’t take long to work and then she pulled out the black foam. It turns out the black foam was rubbing outside of my wound on my healthy skin creating a very angry, upset environment.
I’ve tried to explain the ‘foam’ to people…since it looks like foam or a black sponge but against your skin it feels like its made from sand. The constant rubbing really aggravated my skin. Anyway the upside (I guess?) is they took me off the wound vac for the week. On Friday assuming my skin is not angry any more they will put the vac back in. In the photos from Tuesday I could see a HUGE difference in the appearance of my wound and my medical care team said it seemed shallower as well (which they found out while sticking their HANDS INSIDE ME…I will never get over that damn sensation, not ever). I was surprised at the amount of improvement considering the amount of pain and the damage the foam was doing to healthy tissue.
The bad side: bad to dressings, tape and so on. Blecckkk. Last night I spiked a fever that got higher and higher before leveling off. During the night my fever broke and I sweated it out…so gross. But I woke up on sheets soaked from head to toe. I had no idea your calves could sweat that much. I was really weak and so instead of getting up and changing the sheets, I rolled over…right onto my hip. Well, that led a perfect environment to drain. And drain it did. It drained so much that it soaked through my sheets, and my featherbed. Like I have an extra hundred bucks lying around to waste to get that thing dry cleaned.
Not sure what caused the fever…I was ready to go to the hospital. This morning it was back to normal, although most of the day it has bounced up and down a little. Oh and my blood pressure was high Tuesday. Comparing it to how low it was Friday, it was disturbing. But I was in a lot of pain so it isn’t surprising. I’m getting to be very good at interpreting my body.
Eating still isn’t going much better. I know I need to, and I have access to food that I like but I think it could be I just don’t like eating alone. Hell, the minute I get to my parents house I start looking for stuff to eat (I don’t usually eat anything but I certainly forage for food there. Weird). I literally eat all my meals alone. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. That’s assuming I eat 3 meals a day. Food is so social and something about eating makes me feel really, really alone. The whole eating thing could also be that I have to focus so much on protein first. A stomach only has so much room. Damnit, some nights I’d like to just drink wine eat chocolate then pretend not to cry myself to sleep in lieu of eating a protein heavy meal.
Yea, I’ feeling sorry for myself. There’s only so much positive self-talk a person can do. I need a big project at work to take my mind off myself. It’s like I’ll have a few good days, then a few bad days. I know a lot of my mood bouncing around is triggered by pain and that’s not going anywhere anytime soon. You’d think after all this time I’d be ok and well adjusted. I envy people who are either better actors than me or truly have managed to work through it.
Well that’s more than enough for tonight. I have clean sheets on my bed, I’m bandaged double time so I’m hoping I don’t soak through my sheets. I pray tomorrow I wake feeling strong and that I don’t look like shit so I can go to work with my head held high.
You should go every where with your head held high because you are a fucking WARRIOR. You have been through a mind boggling amount of pain and setbacks. I wish I could help some how. You know if I lived closer we’d eat every meal together.
Love you.