unhealing wound – micheleplumbstowell.org

122 Installing the Sucky Wound Vac

Most of time, the machine sounds like a gurgling coffee pot. There is a crescendo of bubbling, and then it too (like the ostomy) does an enormous raspberry. The sounds of flatulence. This is my life.

The dastardly wound has been dancing around, playing at healing up and down. Last week it was back to seven centimeters. I am not going to lie, it is profoundly aggravating. I take a cocktail of supplements every day to this goal. I also eat far more protein than one would ever want to eat, every day. And there IT is, dancing, playing, acting like it is winning at Survivor.

Dr. Bailey mentioned that this could be ideal, that the body is getting time without chemotherapy, time for other healing, time for building white blood cell counts that fight the cancers (and I will add, we still have Covid-19 floating around the world, so some white blood cells are a great blessing).

Nancy, the wound nurse, jumped through a lot of hoops, and a wound vac was approved for my situation. Three separate phone calls from Kaiser verified this, unsolicited. Three seemed excessive. The company dropped off the four square feet of product at our door personally. A representative came and handed it to me. I wonder what the fee is for all of this. It was all so odd.

I charged the machine. I charged it for four days. Then it was time for “the installation”. I pulled one packet of each type from the huge supply tote, grabbed the machine from its charging station, and headed in for wound care.

A wound vac machine

This is a lot of lead up and drama for something less than dramatic. Nancy cut a white sponge in a column. She packed it into the wound a bit, and then cut a round piece of black sponge. The white, finer texture sponge would keep the more granular black sponge from getting into the wound. Nancy shaped the black one into a rounded cone, maybe two inches across, one inch tall. She placed the rounded point down. If you think about the wound top being a lot like a belly button, the whole works was placed there so that suction would flatten those sponges to even with the skin.

Then a disk with a tube sat atop the stack, and clear sticky sheets, a lot like contact paper, went over the parfait of medical fun. The machine connected to the tube, power was added, and the vacuum happened, sucking everything flat.

As far as the wound goes, the wound vac sucks the walls of the wounds tight to one another, and also pulls the fluid out of the wound. Thus everything is close together and relatively dry, creating the ideal situation for healing. Brilliant, really. Who thinks of these things?

Most of the time, the machine sounds like a gurgling coffee pot. There is a crescendo of bubbling, and then it too (like the ostomy) does an enormous raspberry. The sounds of flatulence. This is my life.

The machine goes where I go. It also likes to be plugged in to a wall socket half the time. I’ve already pulled it off of tables and countertops twice, because I forget that “we are one”. There’s no leaving it behind. I’ve done this “one with the machine” thing before, three days of each chemo cycle. This one is heavier, louder, and more permanent. Permanent in the sense that it is here to stay until the wound decides to go. And, in a few days, we will know how the wound reacts. It will be happy. I already know that. But what results are produced when this dancing, playing character meets a vacuum will be illuminating, the light at the “END of the tunnel”. How is the experience of having a wound vac? It literally sucks!

102 The Stubborn Nature of a Surgical Wound

It heals a centimeter here or a centimeter there. Then it unheals a centimeter here or a centimeter there. What? That can happen? A body can choose to unheal?

A body is a miraculous thing. Almost three months ago, what the surgeon had hoped would be a laparoscopic procedure turned into a large, open, surgical wound, and an abdominal experience.

In the beginning, there were an incredible number of stitches. Within two weeks, the body had closed the tissue and the skin to leave just a couple of small openings. Another two weeks, and the belly button was healed. One left. Miraculous.

And that one wound, the one that is left, is entirely stubborn and unyielding. It heals a centimeter here or a centimeter there. Then it unheals a centimeter here or a centimeter there. What? That can happen? A body can choose to unheal?

It’s about depth. What am I missing? Protein. 30 grams of protein every two hours, a lot of weight gain with that, and I’m definitely not good at it. Water. Apparently, lots of water is required. Exercise. Even though strenuous exercise is totally out of the question, lots of walking is highly encouraged to keep the blood flow at work.

The wound is still in a dance. Back and forth.

It’s about depth. What am I missing? This entire experience is about depth. It is about the dance, back and forth. Walking the line, experiencing the idiosyncrasies of the relationship between life and Eternality. There is something that I am missing.

Or… maybe I am whole… even with a hole.

82 It’s Dark

Everything hurt so much after the doctor visit, that the next time to pack it just added to pain already happening. So, I’m back to constant Tylenol, back to waking up with hurt, and worst of all, I’m dealing with a mind that is obsessed with the idea of how many hours until I need to do it all again.

It’s dark. Actually the sun is rising and I can barely see the screen due to the focus the beams have on me. That is reassuring!

The incision wound needs to step it up a notch and start the closure process. Apparently it’s just been hanging out, being itself for a month. It’s a 3/4 inch hole at the surface, maybe 3 1/2 inches deep. There is a repulsed, grossed out feeling I have when I work with it. I try to explore whether it associates with my past experience with “packing a wound” back in the MRSA days, or if it’s a new experience of its own right.

Because it was not shifting, the surgeon decided to change the routine. Because I can’t really tell what is happening when they are working on me, I make up stories from what I do see. They might be fully false. But what I think happened is that a set of tweezers was used inside the wound to measure the fluid behavior. At any rate, the inner tissue is pissed off. There isn’t a nicer way to say that. Cell rage?

My body has never loved being packed. Packing is when some form of material is put into the open space to allow drainage, and healing the depth of the hole rather than the surface, avoiding infection. Sometimes it’s nothing. Usually my body is angry, and there is pain that radiates immensely for half a day. I was packing the wound every other day.

Now, with a different form of packing material, it needs to be done twice a day. Everything hurt so much after the doctor visit, that the next time to pack it just added to pain already happening. So, I’m back to constant Tylenol, back to waking up with hurt, and worst of all, I’m dealing with a mind that is obsessed with the idea of how many hours until I need to do it all again.

The up side? Sun beams blinding me as I type. A cat lying literally across my left wrist (amazing that typing still happens)

The up side? Sun beams blinding me as I type. A cat lying literally across my left wrist (amazing that typing still happens). Crows calling out, reminding me of spirit and that they are “there for me”. Breath. Breath is always an upside, like the poem Amisha shared.