Some Progress

While I was happy to be home from the hospital I was not pleased with my situation. I yet again had to get used to different nurses coming into my house at least two times a week to change the VAC dressing and I also had to see the surgeon once a week so that she could keep an eye on my progress. While I tried to remain upbeat and positive that eventually things would all work out I was also working myself into quite a mess of emotions. I had to emotionally adjust to the wound VAC being necessary in the first place. While I was having a hard time with that the most difficult physical adjustment was trying to figure out how to sleep. As I've said I was on a Clinitron At-Home bed, which is filled with sand. My cousin once felt it an said that 'it felt like it is filled with a billion babies that are punching at you.' While that may sound funny I have yet to figure out a better way to describe how it felt. I figured that I would just have to relax and that eventually sleep would come.

While I was struggling to sleep I had to manage to fit in nursing visits and doctors appointments into my life. At this point the visits were rather stressful because the VAC was being very particular about how it was sealed. The nursing visits were scheduled to take a hour each time and there were quite a few that ended up taking two hours each. Finally one of my nurses said that a representative from the VAC company would be in my area and that she would like her to come to the next visit and hopefully she would have some suggestions to get it to work better. I agreed because I figured that if we could get the machine quieter that maybe I would be able to sleep. The representive came the next visit and showed us a few materials that we could use to get it to seal better. While they did in fact help they by no means made it silent.

During a subsequent doctors appointment I explained to the surgeon that it had been at that point a solid four weeks since I had slept properly and asked her if she could prescribe something for me to take temporarily. She said that I would need to go see my primary care physician for that. While I understood her reasoning I was not pleased with having to get out and go to another doctor, considering that is no easy task. See, I do not drive so all of these appointments needed to be scheduled around times when my family was available to bring me to them.

When I got home I called my regular doctors office and left a message for her to call me back and generally what it was about. I did receive a return call, but not from my doctor, but from her secretary. The secretary explained that the doctor would need to see me in the office to discuss prescribing something to help me sleep. While I was less than pleased, at this point I wasn't surprised so I went ahead and made an appointment to see her a few days later. During the appointment I caught her up on everything we were doing and all of the special equipment I was adjusting to and explained to her that I was having difficulty sleeping, partially due to noise and partially due to stress I assumed. She did prescribe a medication for me to take that she thought would help. Then she said that if it didn't help to call her back and that she would tell her secretary that with me this did not require another appointment. I left the doctor happy on both accounts.

That night I took the medicine hopeful that it would work. About half an hour after I took it I found myself feeling incredibly drowsy, so I turned off the light and the next thing I knew it was the next morning. Finally, I woke up feeling human it was the greatest feeling ever.

The following weeks consisted of a regular routine of nursing visits and doctors appointments. The wound VAC was working, slowly, but working none the less. My nurse was very pleased with the progress as was the doctor. While I was pleased that we were finally seeing results I was a little bit worried that we had now entered October and the wound still wasn't anywhere near the size it was prior to the nurse putting on the 'one week dressing'. The other thing that was weighing on my mind was that my brother was going to get married in a couple weeks. On one hand I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to go and on the other hand I was worried that if I did go and the wound VAC started to malfunction, that dealing with it in a public restroom would be difficult. I discussed my concerns with my nurses and they assured me that actually being that I was going to be vertical in my wheelchair during the wedding that the chances of the VAC causing problems were slim to none. Assured that it wouldn't be a big problem I went to the wedding determined to have a good time and just forget about all of the things that were going on in my life.

The first few months after the wedding consisted of doctors appointments and nursing visits that were pleasing everyone because the wound was responding nicely to the treatment. Until, those warning bells went off in my head again. One morning I was at the doctor's office and while she was pleased with the wound itself she was worried that I seemed to possibly be developing another one. I was worried when she said that but didn't choose to freak out at that moment. She explained that in her opinion the adhesive used to keep the wound VAC drape in place was tearing my skin when it was removed. I asked her where the second wound was forming and she told me that it was on my thigh. My thigh, which we never once applied the adhesive to. While I believed that I had another wound I did not at all agree with her on what had caused it. Somehow, she convinced me that she was right and I was wrong and that going off the wound VAC was the right thing to do. Instead of listening to my instincts and insisting on staying on it I allowed her to change the orders.