The worst decision I could have made was allowing that one nurse to change my woundcare. She said we were going to do something different and I should have insisted on another opinion when I first heard those warning bells.
We had been changing the wound dressings three times a week and it was going very well. Until that one nurse decided that being that it was almost done we would change to a type of dressing that was to be left on for a week. She basically told me that when she came back a week later that I'd be all but healed. It did not happen like she said it would.
To begin with, the dressing only stayed on for three or four days before it fell off. When it fell off I noticed 'that smell' the 'sour milk, something is really wrong here smell' that anyone that has been around an infected wound knows instantly. Of course I called the agency and told them eventhough I wasn't scheduled for a few days that I required a visit inmediatly. It being a Saturday the on-call nurse was one I had never met before, but at that point I didn't particularly care. She came and put on a new dressing and said she would be back the following day to change it again. Finally, I thought someone that knows what she's doing.
When she came back the following day to change the dressing she explained that it looked 'different' from even the previous day. She covered the wound and told me that she was going to call my doctor's office when she left and that I could expect a call back from her. She explained that yes the wound was infected and that she thought it needed to be seen by a doctor ASAP.
The nurse called me shortly after she left and told me that the doctor wanted me to go to the Emergency Room and to get the infection disease doctors to look at me. I went to the emergency room with an enormous pit in my stomach, very worried about what was happening. The infection doctors at the emergency room looked at the wound, took cultures and had me admitted so that it could be detemined which antibiotic they should put me on.
I was placed on antibiotics and two days later they were ready to discharge me. When the patient coordinator came into my room to set up all of the home nursing care I would need, I finally decided to speak up about that one nurse that I never wanted to see ever again. The patient coordinator listened to my story and completely understood my concerns. She made arrangements for a different company to take over my homecare. I was relieved that it would be a different company this time around, yet was also worried that something would go horribly wrong again.
In addition to being discharged to homecare I was instructed to start seeing a wound care center in a neighboring town. The first visit to the wound care center wasn't really a big deal, other than the doctor I saw wouldn't be the one that would be treating me regularly. He was just filling in while that doctor was dealing with an emergency. All he did at the first appointment was to start cutting away all of the infected tissue. As he was cutting it away I was sort of surprised to notice that I was in no pain what so ever. Of course dead tissue has no feeling so I suppose that makes sense. The other thing that struck me was the horrendous odor that was coming from the wound. It smelled like burning rotten flesh which of course makes sense cause for all intents and purposes that's exactly what it was. The doctor told me to go back the following week so that the doctor that was going to see me regularly could do her evaluation.
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