Blunders Cause Pain

Today the nurses changed the wound vac dressing in Heather's abdominal wound. You may recall that this is a foam that they cut to the size of the wound, cover it with tape, and attach a small vacuum hose to it for the purpose of sucking out discharge and improving healing. The problem was that they were supposed to change it on Saturday or at least yesterday because it is only supposed to be in for two days. However, there was some miscommunication, and it didn't happen until today. The problem with waiting too long, we found out today, is that the tissue begins growing into the foam which makes it very painful to remove.

I was at work today, so I missed all that excitement. Apparently it was incredibly painful, and they had to give her a lot of fast-acting, IV narcotics. On a positive note, the nurses said that the wound looks fantastic and is healing extremely well. They decided that because it looks so good it doesn't need the wound vac any more. They felt that it was wrong for the UofU to use the kind of wound vac foam (silver impregnated) they used on the last wound vac dressing. We didn't understand it either, as they had always used a black (instead of gray/silver) foam in the past. The nurses here said that the gray foam is more likely to cause the tissue to grow into it. They put a different dressing of some sort on it that no longer requires the vac.

Because they had to use so much of the IV narcotics to get the abdominal wound dressing out, they could not give Heather any more for her legs and back dressings. They had to wait 6 hours to give more IV narcotics, so they put the legs and back dressing changes off until tonight. When I just talked to Heather (8:30pm) they had not yet done it. The problem with that is that the most well-trained wound care nurses are there during the day and they had put the abdominal wound dressing change off so long (They had told Heather they would do the dressing change in the morning, but didn't get to it until afternoon.) that they were off shift by the time the 6 hours were over. That leaves the job to a less well-trained nurse for tonight. The long wait also increases the chances that the dressings on Heather's back will stick to her and be more painful coming off. I am not impressed. It is bad enough that Heather has to go through so much pain, but when it is largely avoidable it is maddening!

In other news, Heather used the toilet for the first time in over a month and a half today. She had to be wheeled on a chair to do it, but it is big progress just to feel well enough to sit up. She seems to be doing better each day, but I think she will be doing remarkably better when they stop torturing her.