Learning to Relax (in more ways than one)

It has now been approximately three weeks since I have been discharged from the Wound Care Center. My visiting nurses are still seeing me once a week and they are confident that my wound is really closed for good this time. Their confidence is great; I am just waiting for my mind to catch up to it. I am still incredibly nervous that it may open again. I am trying to strike a balance between being aware that the wound has opened in the past, yet trying to adjust to having my life back to normal. I still regularly make sure that I’m not seeing any discharge and also, asking my boyfriend to check to make sure that it is closed between nursing visits. When my nurse came yesterday she assured me that it is closed and then warned me that the next visit may end up being my last. Apparently when she told me that I had a terrified look on my face because she immediately said that she really does only live a couple of minutes away and that it was okay for me to call her if I really felt that something was weird after I was discharged. She said that she would either come out to check the wound if I was really upset or if I was just mildly concerned she said she might just try to talk to me and try to get me to calm down.

My boyfriend has said that it is okay with him if I post a few of the pictures, so though I chose to keep my wound pictures private, I will share his.

Boyfriend's wound picture taken approximately September 4, 2012

After the visiting nurse and I treated it for a few weeks, it began to look too dry:

Picture taken October 16, 2012

Picture taken mid October, after treating with Hydrogel

Picture taken late October 2012

Picture taken early November 2012

Everything after that seemed fine until I saw it again in late January 2013. That is when I told him that it needed to be seen.

What my boyfriend's wound looked like in mid/late January

Photo from the first time the wound care center saw the wound (January 30, 2013) after it had been treated with Calcium alginate and a Tegaderm Foam Adhesive

Taken at wound care February 6, 2013 after having daily ABD dressing changes

Photo taken approximately February 8,2013 after Bactroban ointment

Taken February 9, 2013 after continued Bactroban


Calm down seems to be a recurring theme in my wound-life because when my boyfriend left to go to his house last week I was a little bit worried that he would have to take care of his wound without me. I was confident that he is not incompetent and could change the dressings without a problem, but I was worried that he would minimize it if he suddenly weren’t doing as well. That paranoia lead to me regularly asking him to text me pictures of his wound so that I could stay as up to date on its progress as possible. I am getting ahead of myself though, last week at my boyfriend’s appointment at the wound care center he was told that the culture results had come back positive for MRSA.

The surgeon therefore prescribed Bactroban Ointment an antibiotic to treat the infection, which my boyfriend was to apply to the wound bed once or twice a day when he changed the dressing. When the surgeon examined the wound itself though, he said that he thought it appeared a little smaller. I concurred (as if my opinion actually matters. ha-ha) that it did seem to be a little better than it had been, at least since the last time I had seen it.

My boyfriend is continuing to treat his wound himself at home and is periodically updating me on what he thinks is happening. He goes back to the wound care center next week. The surgeon said the he had a feeling that treating it with the ointment and just a small gauze pad would get it going in the direction we wanted it to go in. Hopefully, the surgeon is correct. Currently I am waiting for my boyfriend to visit so that among other things, he can show me a picture of my wound again so that maybe we can drill it into my head that it really is closed.

I know I am bordering on ridiculous with my level of paranoia about my wound; it is just that I cannot get the previous time that it was closed out of my head. I was so incredibly happy and relieved that it had closed (after 3+ years) and then absolutely devastated when it opened after six weeks of it being closed and living a normal life, once again doing what I wanted to do without having to worry about a wound.