Winging It

A few days ago, I had another checkup. My deep wound has a good amount of pus boiling inside of it. Awesome. The visit involved a pretty torturous wipe out with gauze. My surgeon recommended I go to physical therapy for “pulse lavage.” When I went, I found out that it’s basically a tube with a little rubber cone on the end where water comes out and shoots into the wound and vacuum suction pulls it back out with the debris to wash to wound. I basically lasted 3-5 whole seconds before I couldn’t take it anymore. I was nervous to begin with, but I was hoping it would be a moderately soothing experience, but I didn’t even really feel the water, just pain. So the guy who was doing it is also a wound care specialist, and he gave me a different packing to put in the wound. I’ve used it before on my stoma; it’s called aquacel and it’s basically a silver dressing that promotes healing and soaks up debris. He also gave me an antiseptic wound spray to spray all up in there. The packing hurts a lot less than stuffing all that gauze in there, but it is also very expensive and not covered by insurance. I’m going back tomorrow to see if we need to make any changes.

Pain, pain go away…

I talked to my surgeon on the phone yesterday and told her how bad it hurt with the packing in. It’s like I can’t sit, lay down, walk, do anything! The packing also fell out as soon as I got up to pee two days in a row; just plopped right out into the toilet. Her advice was to try a little less packing and see if it helps, and she mailed me another prescription for dilaudid since I’m going to run out before my next appointment.

So last night, instead of struggling to pack the wound where my butthole used to be with a 4×4 gauze, we cut that gauze in half and packed it. Before, half was hanging out, and I think that’s why it fell out twice. Now, most of it goes in, but it stays in better. As for the pain, we’ll see if it’s any different. Last night and this morning were pretty terrible, but it has subsided a little this evening. I still think there is really about the same amount of packing inside the wound, so it still hurts and it is still excruciating to go through the actual packing process. I really dread that every single night, so I hope that it heals quickly, but I still get a lot of bloody drainage as well.

I didn’t really know what to expect going into this surgery and knowing that the wound would have to stay open. I guess I didn’t expect it to be this painful. It definitely makes me wish everything was taken out at once and I was all sewn up, but then I probably would be in a different place in life, and I wouldn’t want that.

Christ.

Just FYI, last night’s packing change was a NIGHTMARE. It was soooo painful. There wasn’t any bleeding or anything, but it was probably some of the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. I had to tell Rob to stop. I could not tolerate it at all. I literally sobbed after it was finished, and I’ve always thought myself to have a high pain tolerance.

Today, Rob got off the hook, because I had a follow-up appointment with my doctor and she changed the packing. Not as bad as last night, but still very painful. I was very tense and nervous the entire time. She also removed the drain which was no big deal in comparison.

Anyway, I got her to write me a prescription for a stronger pain medication. The percocet just was not cutting it, so she wrote me a prescription for dilaudid. I’m hoping that this helps a lot more, because I do NOT want to go through another packing change like that. Ever.

Phew…

I just want to say, tonight’s packing change went much better than last night’s. We did everything the same, but I didn’t bleed all over the place like before. I think the extreme pain from last night was due to the bleeding and the pressure that built up inside from all the blood. So…not that bad. Hopefully, it continues to go more and more smooth from now on.

Slightly Traumatic

I spent two nights in the hospital, and I’m home now. The biggest thing to deal with now is wound care and pain management. I still have the penrose drains in until Monday when I have my recheck appointment.

Basically, I have two wounds. I have the smaller wound where the draining tract to my abscess was in the middle of my buttcrack; my surgeon made it a little deeper and scraped out the granulation tissue. Then I have the deeper wound where my rectum and anus were removed. Both need to be packed daily with gauze and “Intrasite” wound gel.

Last night was the first night Rob had to change out the packing. He has been dealing with the smaller wound for a while now, but the deeper one is new. He watched the surgeon do it in the hospital, and it’s a simple task, but it’s still pretty daunting. An entire 4×4 gauze fits into that wound, and it’s a pretty painful experience to go through.

He took out the dressing and I took a shower to clean it off. After I showered, it started bleeding a good amount and didn’t want to stop, which made it difficult to insert the packing. It was just extremely frustrating and slightly scary.

Then, a little while after, the packing became extremely painful. Like, I was shaking painful. It was really awful. I felt like I could hardly move. But then, I adjusted position, and it felt like some more blood came out and I felt immediately more comfortable. I don’t know. It eventually stopped bleeding, but damn.

I’m hoping tonight goes much smoother, but we’ll see.

Buttpocalypse 2011

So, it’s finally here. December 13th, 2011 was the last day I’ll ever have a butthole. Just to reiterate, I had already had a permanent ileostomy and total colectomy, but a very small portion of my rectal stump and anus had been left intact so I wouldn’t have to deal with a nonhealing wound at the time. That was a year and a half ago. More recently, I had been having complications with the rectal stump. There was purulent (pus) discharge from my anus and my biggest concern was an abscess that had formed a draining tract to the outside of the middle of my buttcrack. It was some painful stuff, plus sooo annoying to deal with all that discharge.

But, uh, yeah. Today: no butthole. The worst thing about it was the fact that I had infected tissue, so my surgeon had to leave the wound partially open and pack it. There’s also a penrose drain in for a couple of days. But yeah, she just cut it right out and packed it right up. I spent the night at the hospital and had my first dressing change this morning, which explains why I’m up at 7:00am. It wasn’t TOO bad, mostly just scary to think about. I have a lot of healing left to do though.

I can’t end the post without giving a shout out to my boyfriend, Rob. He has been right there beside me since the beginning of this whole infection mess. He’s helped me change dressings and was SO brave about it even though it probably pained him as much as it pained me. Plus, he’s right here beside me sleeping in my hospital room. I couldn’t ask for a better support.