Postby Bev G » Thu Aug 27, 2015 8:12 am
Hi Judy,
What a nightmare you've been through, butt you're strong and tough, and you ARE making it through. I want to preface my couple of comment with the fact that I do not have an ostomy, butt I can say that as a nurse it sounds like you are on the right track. I'm so glad a competent nurse came to help you.
I did have a wound vac for my liver resection failure to heal and wanted to mention some stuff I learned the hard way. My liver incision was about 26" long, a mercedes-benz incision. It was nothing butt problems from the beginning. There was a small area that opened and leaked. Over the course of a couple of weeks they opened more and more of the incision. Eventually the entire wound was open, and down to the fascia. It drained many cups of stuff a day. Eventually, the applied a wound vac. Unfortunately my home care nurse who came every day to change the packing/wound vac. I had no way of knowing at that time that she had NO IDEA what she was doing. As it turns out, she made things much worse rather than any better. A couple of months after the liver resection the wound had basically not healed at all. Her aggressive mucking around had created/worsened tunnelling happing at the bottom of the wound. Two months later I had to go back to surgery and have the whole thing re-opened down to the fascia. The wound vac was abandoned and I went to twice daily wound re-packing until it finally healed. That took seven months. By November the incision had finally closed, and my mop-up chemo (which should really have started within 6 weeks) was finally started.
On one of the home nurse's last visits she brought with her the nurse specialist from the wound-vac company. The company nurse was mortified by what she had been doing. Initially the wrong sponges were being used. Removing them from the wound was torture---they were very had, rough and most like brillo pads, and the wrong ones for this application. She had been aggressively using long q-tips to "clean" the incision. She wound up poking holes through all the tissue that HAD healed, and eventually these defects completed covered the incision bed. Most importantly, I think, was that I should have turned the wound vac off about an hour before the nurse came. That would have allowed the packing to soften with the tissue leakage and largely eliminated the intense pain of removing the packing. Taking pain medication, if needed, and hour before the vac change is a good idea, and at that time turning the vac off. I hope your wound vac experience is NOTHING like mine, butt if you get the feeling that your nurse isn't really familiar with the vac, ask for the company specialist to be called out immediately. I should add that my half-century of type 1 diabetes massively contributed to my wound healing issues, butt competent care can't be substituted.
WIshing you the very best, and fast continued healing.
Hugs to you,
Bev
PS I don't know how long your chemo will be delayed. Mine was so far out there was contemplation of just not doing it. I went to MSKCC for a second-opinion about the chemo and Dr K suggested skipping it. My onc and I were uncomfortable with that, so I had 5 months of chemo starting in November (liver resection had been in early April. I am unbelievably fortunate that I have been cancer-free since my liver resection in 4/10. Try to not worry too much that your chemo is being delayed a bit.
58 yo Type1 DM 48 years
12/09 Stage IV 2/22 nodes + liver met, colon resec
3 tx FOLFIRI, liver resec 4/10
9/10 6 mos off chemo, Neg PET&CTC CEA nl
2/11 finished total 10 rounds chemo
9/13 ^17th clean PET/CT NED for now