it should be xkcd

But no, its the instructions to nurses and hospital staff on the back of this drip stand.

Maybe its only because I find xkcd funny.

Take a peek if you've never looked:
xkcd.com

:-)

The suction dressing foam

I thought it may be interesting to see a little more details on the vacuum dressing. This is a small snipping of the foam used in packing my vacuum dressing.

Basically they lay down a thin sheet of adhesive plastic, trim out of that the shape of the wound. Then they size down a larger chunk of this foam to fill the wound and cover that with the suction cup. Finally a layer of the thin adhesive plastic is again used to seal the suction cup on.

It helps the body fill in flesh under the skin as the skin is healing.

VAC pack

Feeling a little better this morning and so I thought that I would write a little about the vacuum dressing that they are using to dress and cover my wound.

These two pictures show the waterproof plastic dressing and the suction cup that covers it. You can perhaps also see the foam packing that is under the suction cap. The tube is connected to a suction pump with a reservoir trap to catch the gunk that it suck out of the wound.

This seems to do a number of things:

1 - allow the wound to remain moist which I understand promotes better healing.

2 - the foam promotes some skin growth around the edges and the flesh underneath to grow too.

3 - the vacuum draws the edges of the wound together and encourages it to close.

4 - it allows the suction to be there while not getting the wound sucked into the pipe.

Never heard of it before but apart from being tethered to this machine all the time it seems to be making things better faster.

Will keep you posted

Results stage 1

I woke up from the surgery in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) feeling better that when I awoke ther last time (after my heart surgery).

The surgery this time was to remove the wires and to remove dead or infected flesh (debridement, worth looking at wikipedia on that one).

Apart from feeling groggy I actually felt better than when I went in. I had been complaining about the wires for some time since the surgery. That their removal makes me feel better immediately says to me that I was right.

I am now waiting for the lab results to identify what the infection was and if there was any infection (or it was just an immune response to the constant irritation from the wires).

As a reasonable precaution the hospital has me on IV antibiotics straight into my heart via a type of catheter through my arm.

I will post more when I know it.