Saw the surgeon today. She wants me to try a wound vacuum to see if it speeds up healing. She hasn't said so, but I can tell that at the rate it's moving right now, we'll be doing gauze changes for months.
The way the vacuums work is that they fill the wound with a piece of foam cut to the right size, then seal the whole thing under plastic, then poke a hole for the hose that connects to the vacuum, and then seal it all up under another layer of plastic.
The dressing changes are supposed to be excruciatingly painful because the new flesh around the edges can grow into the foam and it gets torn away when they remove it.
On the upside the steady vacuum pressure should help, and it will pull all the liquid out. I still soak through several layers of gauze, an ABD (thick pad), and three layers of ace wrap in about six hours. It will be nice to be dry and not have to sleep on a towel anymore.
The big downside is that I'll have to carry the vacuum with me everywhere I go for however many weeks or months this takes to heal. Or maybe two vacuums. The doc wasn't sure if they could hook up one machine to both wounds.
They're going to send a nurse to the house to install it, probably sometime tomorrow or Wednesday.
The way the vacuums work is that they fill the wound with a piece of foam cut to the right size, then seal the whole thing under plastic, then poke a hole for the hose that connects to the vacuum, and then seal it all up under another layer of plastic.
The dressing changes are supposed to be excruciatingly painful because the new flesh around the edges can grow into the foam and it gets torn away when they remove it.
On the upside the steady vacuum pressure should help, and it will pull all the liquid out. I still soak through several layers of gauze, an ABD (thick pad), and three layers of ace wrap in about six hours. It will be nice to be dry and not have to sleep on a towel anymore.
The big downside is that I'll have to carry the vacuum with me everywhere I go for however many weeks or months this takes to heal. Or maybe two vacuums. The doc wasn't sure if they could hook up one machine to both wounds.
They're going to send a nurse to the house to install it, probably sometime tomorrow or Wednesday.
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