About Nothing

Well, I went back into the hospital on 2 March, 2007. I was taken back into surgery where a split-skin graft was taken from my upper right thigh and stapled into place over the wound on my right side chest.

Since my surgeon is pretty young, he knows all of the latest tricks. Among other things, he used a wound-vac on my graft. This device is a vacuum device that causes a pad over the graft to be compressed, solving the number one reason grafts don't take properly. That is, it keeps the grafted skin from sliding around on the wound. It also reduces the number 2 reason for failures and that is it cuts down on the build up of fluid betwen the graft and the underlying flesh. It also helps to reduce the possibilty of the third biggest cause of skin graft failure, namely failure of the blood vessels to grow into the grafted skin. By removing the air on the surface of the skin, the blood vessels are stimulated into growing more rapidly, causing them to grow into the new skin to supply it with oxygen, giving it a new blood supply quickly enough that the cells don't begin to die.

The only drawback I found to the wound-vac was that when it would begin to pump when I had my chest muscles flexed in a certain way, it would grip the staples and push them further into my chest. The feeling was somewhat like having an angry cat tucked under my right arm. It would also seem to grab onto a handful of flesh at times and squeeze it quite hard. Both of these feelings were rather disconcerting and something I never got used to.

The pump was left attached for five days and was removed on Wednesday March 7th, or one week ago today. I was allowed to leave the hospital late that afternoon and returned home, where my wife, Kathleen began to care for me once again.

On Monday, 12 March, 2007, I visited the doctor to have the staples removed. Most of them came out with little fanfare. There were three of them that caused more than just a little discomfort, and one that hurt rather substantially, but all really went pretty well. The donor site on my thigh is nearly healed already. It seldom gives me any pain and currently looks like a bad sunburn, with the surface starting to peel a little.

I may add a couple of pictures of the wound after the doctor removed all of the diseased skin and another since the graft was done. To those that are squeemish, be forewarned that if you don't like this kind of picture, don't look at them. They are not art of any kind.

The last week of November 2006, I developed a small boil on the side of my chest. It grew, opened up and began to drain. When it started to dry out and show signs of healing over, I hardly gave it any more thought. It swelled again, and even drained a little more the last week of December, but again, I figured it would eventually heal and all would be good.

The first week of the New Year the wound, now about 4 cm across, started to look pretty nasty. At the end of the first week of January, it doubled in size over the weekend and by Monday January 8, 2006; I knew it was time to seek medical help.

The doctors and nurses were amazed at what was now being called an ulcerative lesion on the side of my chest. I was prescribed a strong antibiotic and scheduled to see a surgeon so he could take samples of the area. The biopsy was performed on January 10th and my follow-up visit was on January 18th.

The good news was that it didn't seem to be cancer. The bad news was that it had again more than doubled in size, this while I was taking antibiotics to kill the infection. My surgeon looked at it for all of 15 seconds before sending me to the hospital. Thursday was spent clearing up loose ends at work and getting checked into Provena St Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Illinois.

On Friday, January 19, 2006, Dr M. Corrales took me into the operating room to clean the dead and dying tissue from the wound and also to drain another; still only about 3 cm boil that had appeared in the last couple of days. I spent the weekend on IV antibiotics and watched my Chicago Bears beat up on the Cinderella Saints of New Orleans from my hospital bed.

The first few days of changing dressings on the wound were an event I do not wish to relive. Each day's healing seemed to be ripped away with each piece of dressing that was removed. I bled more during dressing changes than I did in surgery. Then on Monday, a nurse named Joanna and one from the wound care unit named Becky tried a hydrogel dressing that was what I would call perfect. If you must have a wound like this, this is great stuff. It sticks very little, does not seem to get incorporated into the flesh as it heals and really seals the area against infection while allowing oxygen to get to the area to promote healing.

On Monday they identified the bug that was trying to eat my body. As it turned out, it was a bacillus that does not normally invade the skin, which is why it was difficult to identify, I suppose, since it was not something you would normally look for in the place it was growing. Once they knew what it was, the right oral antibiotics were prescribed and I was allowed to leave for home on Wednesday the 24th of January.

Since then, a nurse comes to the house once per day to change the dressing and to monitor my progress. I will be off at least the remainder of this week, but I hope to be able to get back to work next Monday. I would like to save a little vacation time for later this year, if at all possible.

Since I don't have a lot of time for this, I'm going to keep this short.

John, Ken and I took a trip to ROLF in March (24th - 26th). Fishing wasn't what we'd hoped, but we still enjoyed the trip and I did get to visit Myron.

I'm adding a few pics that I took while there in a new album.

Ok, here's where I'm supposed to start with something witty, bright and profound. The problem is, I have nothing that falls into any of those categories. So I'll start with an observation; am I the only one that thinks things are a bit "slow" around here? I started out by posting a few pics in an album, but they've had very few views and only one comment, which was really only a calling card, no comment at all. If I'd posted the pics to my normal news group, I'd have been, at the very least, flamed for having too much saturation. I followed up with pics of my granddaughter, just so friends could see her. Still not so much as a whimper from anyone. I guess this "community" is a "bedroom community" and everyone only comes here to sleep. zzzz...

Sorry, I guess I dozed off there for a few seconds.

And now I'm trying to start a blog, of all things. (As if I have time for such a thing.) I guess I'll just see where this goes, and for now, add stuff that might or might not cause someone to think, or perhaps stop thinking all together. We'll have to see.

Now if I click this...