My Noisy New Purse

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This is the second in a series of blog posts about my experiences as a cancer patient and survivor. Before we begin, I want to be clear that all opinions expressed here are my own. Nothing that I say in these posts should be taken as medical advice. If you have any questions or concerns, you need to reach out to a licensed medical professional immediately.

I know I said my next post was going to be about my diagnosis, but this weekend, I got a noisy new purse and I thought I’d tell you about it.

Background

The day after my surgery, we could tell that there was one area that just wasn’t healing quite right. The bruising was spectacular, if I do say so myself–very dark purple. The surgeon was a little concerned that the area was going to become necrotic (in other words, that the skin wasn’t getting good circulation and that the tissue there was going to die).

We started rubbing a nitroglycerin-based ointment on the bruised patch every day, and while it did get smaller, eventually it became clear that there was a rectangular area, about 2×3, that was just not getting enough circulation.

The problem was that skin was along an incision. And as that skin turned necrotic and withered, my incision slowly opened, further and further, until it got huge (I’m spitballing here, but I think it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 cm x 10 cm at this point).

On my own, I was cleaning the wound multiple times a day and applying what’s called a “wet to dry” dressing. The principle is that you take gauze, wet it (in distilled/sterile water), and pack the wound with that wet gauze. You cover that with an absorbent dressing. As the gauze dries, it helps pull away the “yuck” (y’all like that clinical term?) from the wound.

I was getting pretty good at solo bandage changes, and I think we spent approximately eighty bajillion dollars on non-stick wound pads, gauze, and tape for sensitive skin. Someone at Band-Aid’s kid can take another semester of college classes thanks to me.

The wound was getting big enough, though, that even though it looked pink and healthy, it was time to do something else before an infection eventually set in. Enter the wound vac.

Delivery

So, this part is just a funny part, because wires got crossed, but I’ll tell the story anyway. I sleep in a recliner in the living room these days. I have for months, at first because I needed to sleep that way to help with the heartburn and nausea, and now because it’s easier to keep from accidentally injuring myself or waking myself up in pain.

Monday night, I had conked out in the recliner per usual. I was sleeping pretty good until I heard my husband barreling down the hall, bellowing in his manliest voice “WHO IS IT?”

Y’all.

I nearly peed.

It was after 11:00 PM, and I had been sleeping so soundly, I hadn’t heard the vehicle pull up or the man getting in and out of the various compartments of his truck, but Joseph and Cameron had. All they had heard was “bumping in the night”. But when Joseph called out, the voice replied, “I have a wound vac delivery!”

It took me two hours to settle back down, haha. But I appreciate that they thought it was an urgent delivery and needed to get it to me ASAP! That’s service! 11:30PM on a holiday, no less.

What’s a Wound Vac?

So, my Home Health nurse came to visit Saturday and hook me up to my noisy new purse. She’ll visit three times a week for a few weeks until that incision closes back up. Before all of this process, I’d never heard of a wound vac, but the best description I can think of for it is artificial scabbing. If you’re curious, here is a (non-gross) video about how wound vacs work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz8ppbbc6aw.

My wound vac is kept in a small black bag. The tubing snakes out of one side and I try to keep most of it hidden under my shirt. It has a battery, but I do keep it plugged in when I’m sitting still.

Because my wound isn’t really bad (I know, I know–it’s big and long, but it’s not deep), there’s not much in the tubes. There’s a little condensation, mostly. I’m not sure how it would be if I were someone who had a deep or “bad” wound. Mine is clean, healthy, and shallow, so the wound vac should close it pretty quickly.

It bubbles and gurgles as it keeps suction, and every few minutes it lets out this little series of sighing bubbles that sound an awful lot like I’m struggling with gas, but it’s not obnoxiously loud.

It is definitely annoying and certainly uncomfortable to have a big foam pad “Food-Savered” to my chest, but I do take heart in knowing that I’ll only have to deal with this annoyance for a few weeks. For those that were curious, the process wasn’t very painful at all (minor discomfort as we put on the dressing, but as I said, right now it’s mostly just annoying to have a big sticky pad).

I’ll have dressing changes 3x a week. The nurse told me to expect that those changes would take about thirty minutes, which sounds like an inconvenience, but if you calculate the fact that I was doing wet to dry dressing changes 3 to 5 times a day, this is actually considerably MORE convenient (that, and I don’t have to deal with having a damp dressing all day long, which is more uncomfortable than the vac, in my opinion).

So, there you have it. The Wound Vac. If you have any questions, reach out! Ask!

Until next time, then. In the meantime, I want to leave you with some important links:

If you have any questions or concerns, I urge you to do what I did and call your primary doctor.

“‘But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,’ declares the LORD…” — Jeremiah 30:17