ER trip after surgery

Hello internet! I have taken a few days off from blogging as I caught up on sleep and focused on some other things. And by other things I mean spending six hours cross stitching a series of bumble bees around a giant flower I completed months ago, or another fourteen hours doing all the back stitching on another flower that I have probably spent at least thirty hours stitching already. That, or sleeping. I swear that this whole bone re-growing, external fixator, dependent on crutches thing is turning my into an old woman!

Medically speaking, I ended off talking about the surgery I had on March 11th to remove the heterotopic ossification from my leg and clean up the ends of the bone that will have to dock together. My post-op appointment was scheduled for March 22nd.

Before I was discharged from the hospital, either the incision or one of my pin sites bleed through the dressing on my leg. My surgeon came and reinforced it and gave us instructions on what to do if it would happen again. I was a bit weary of leaving the dressing on my leg for the next week and a half, which would prevent me from doing pin site care, the main way to prevent any infections from brewing. I was also concerned because my bottom two pins like to leak quite a bit and I know from the nursing courses I have taken so far that it is not good to leave a wet dressing on the skin for long because the warmth and moisture can break down the skin and make an ideal breeding ground for bacteria. But removing the dressing wasn't an option because the surgical incision was so fresh, so we just had to hope everything would be okay.

Over the following days, it became obvious that one of my pin sites, the second from the bottom, was continuing to drain as it always had. I was weary of leaving the dressing on but trusted what my surgeon said. By late Monday, however, I was growing rather concerned. The drainage had leaked through the dressing, including the reinforced layer, which had become moist, some what hardened, and dark brown. I will add pictures of this at the bottom of the post - they are kind of gross, so if you don't want to see them, don't scroll down past the second picture of me.

My mum and I were quite worried because we didn't know if this was normal drainage or pus or even what the effects of all the moisture on the skin over time would be. So on the morning of Tuesday March 15th we drove up to the hospital in Hamilton and went to the ER with those magic words 'direct ortho'. Now these words don't magic a doctor into being right before your eyes. We still had to go through the whole triage and waiting room system. But we were seen earlier than a lot of other people there and when it came to seeing doctors we did get seen much sooner by someone from ortho than we normally would have. Unfortunately, that we not my surgeon, but the doctor we did see was professional and kind.

Hospital selfie. It feels like the majority of the pictures I have taken over the last year were taken in one hospital or another.

Just chilling out with my fixator and polka dot sock. It goes in the wash the moment I come home from a hospital appointment. Remember, more often than not, this thing touches the floor in the hospital. Imagine the germs on it!

Magical curtain of privacy...

... and silly paper towel draped over stretcher that gives the illusions of cleanliness but really does nothing to protect you from germs. Also tears easily, thus entirely defeating it's purpose, and makes crinkly sounds every time you move.

I was first seen by a rather young (and good looking) doctor. I think he was a resident but am not sure. He also had a female doctor who I assume was either new to the hospital or a student with him. He seemed quite eager to get involved with the fixator. It's not every day that you get to see one after all, let alone touch it or work with it. Unfortunately for him, after going through the whole spiel of what's going on it was evident to him that he did have to call somebody from the orthopedic department. So we waited some more, but not as long as usual given those lovely words, direct ortho, that I was allowed to use.

The doctor who was called was the same one I had seen less then a week prior when I had some big concerns about swelling and discomfort before the heterotopic thingy could be removed. By now they probably think that I am a hypochondriac. I'm not, I swear! I just have giant metal pins sticking out of my body... enough to put anybody on edge, I think.

The doctor from ortho who I saw tried to contact my surgeon. It took some time but he eventually got through to him. My surgeon said to take the entire dressing down. OS to my great relief, he dressing on my leg was removed. It was nasty and looked worse underneath than it did on the outside. Fortunately, nothing looked like it was infected. The skin was quite red, puffy and macerated (fancy word for soft and mushy) around the second bottom pin that had been draining. It was also a bit sore. But nothing that letting it air out for a bit wouldn't fix.

The doctor applied a new dressing. While he was doing this, the first doctor and the woman following him around came back into the room to gather supplies. They stayed in the room much longer then necessary to collect the needed supplies - half the time was spent staring at my leg now sans dressing with the pin sites exposed. I don't blame them for looking either. It is quite interesting stuff. This time my leg was wrapped in bandages with a tensor bandage over top (with no latex in them - I'm allergic), so the whole thing looked and felt more secure. And then we were on our way home. We did have some issues with the tape sticking to the tensor bandage over the next few days but we eventually figured out that we could just jab the end of the tensor bandage onto one of the pins and it would stay put.

And that was the end of the issues I had between surgery and my pre-op appointment.
I will leave you with yet another hospital selfie, and if you continue to scroll down there are some pictures of my manky dressing before it was changed in the emergency department.

Here is the dressing around my manky pin site. Quite gross, actually. I am really glad that there was no infection brewing underneath because we really weren't sure what was causing the drainage (normal pin site leaking or pus) before the dressing came off. I don't think I have eve been so happy to hear the words "normal drainage" before. It is kind of surreal though because there shouldn't be drainage to begin with and yet we were happy with it.