My surgeon met us at his office at 10:30 pm, yes AT NIGHT, (pre-arranged) after we called his service and they called him, so he could look at my very heavily leaking bellybutton wound.
Turns out, the top part of the wound, and which was open all the way to below my bellybutton, had created a "pocket" like a zit would, but it was full of fat and dead blood (red blood cells), not infection. It would try to seal itself up, get full of gross foul-smelling liquid, and burst, in the case of last Thursday night, all over my undies, two Kotex, gauze, a nightgown, a sheet, a mattress pad, and a huge watermelon-sized stain on our fairly new mattress. F*CK!
So, for fun, I now have to lavage it once a day. He gave me a pile of medical syringes (turkey baster-looking things), a full pack of gauze, two measuring cups, two bottles of betadine, and two big plastic bowls.
So every day, in the shower, and he saw me on Friday and said I could do it as many times a day as I want, I must fill one of the big measuring cups with warm/hot water, squirt in some betadine so it's dark, suck it into the syringe, and insert it into the upper opening of my wound and squirt it with betadine water repeatedly. I do it about five times because that's all my ick factor can take. I may start doing it twice a day starting tomorrow.
How does it look now? Much, much improved. The center section is healed together and no longer open, and I have leaking wounds only at the top and bottom, and hopefully they're on their way to healing up, also.
He swore to me that in a month I would have a thin white scar there and nothing else.
I cried while I laid on his table because the thing was so damn icky and scary looking. He said, "Don't cry. Then I'll start crying." I felt bad that he did so it eased up a little.
"I know to you guys," he went on, "it looks terrible. But for me? It looks just fine. Normal. I see this all the time. Don't worry."
He shoved a bunch of gauze in the bottom hole with a surgical swab (those long Q-tips), which burned like a mutherfucker (ow ow ow ow), and I took it out that night by myself. Rip, one quick pull, and done. And ewww. Icky.
So we finished up, he locked up, walked us out, and he and my husband stood and talked science for about 10 minutes. *rolleyes* This happens with all my doctors. My oncologist at UCSF was disappointed when my husband didn't come in for my appointment/checkup (he couldn't find a parking place. San Francisco, come on!). "Oh? Where's your husband? I was looking forward to talking to him. LOL
So it's healing, but the ick and smell are still there. Sometimes R can smell it and his nose isn't that great. Who else is smelling it? UGH. It smells like a cross between the bottom of a dumpster and feces. How do I know what the bottom of a dumpster smells like? If you've ever thrown your keys in there along with a bag of trash...you might know what the bottom of a dumpster smells like (as I do).
I took a 4 hour nap this afternoon after our usual newspaper and Denny's (we still have free entree' coupons!), then cat litter at Target (closed for Easter), then K-Mart for cat food, which was sold out, but got me some Crystal Lite classic orange. It tastes just like the Tang of my childhood (astronauts drink it!!).
I'm going to go finish my all meat omelet (I can probably get four more meal out of it) and watch Call the Midwife and Game of Thrones. Heh.
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