Friday, January 10, 2020
The excessive sweating and associated coldness I have been experiencing are pretty much gone, except for yesterday. I get to blame my wound care doctor, Dr. Dash, for yesterday’s sweating. My sweat is my body’s reaction to pain my brain cannot feel, and I cannot feel most of my body. That inability to feel is one of the reasons it took so long to diagnose my cancer; I did not know where it hurt. (The fact nobody would order an MRI was a bigger reason.)
When you have pressure wounds, they need to heal from the inside out. A scab is a great tool for healing a scrape, but not a pressure sore. I have pretty clean wounds, but sometimes the wounds get scabby or get a small amount of dead tissue on top. When I go to the wound care center, Dr. Dash scrapes away any tissue that could impede proper healing. Some visits I do not need any scraping. Yesterday, Dr. Dash scraped three out of my four wounds.
I do not let the nurses put lidocaine on my wounds before Dr. Dash sees me because my brain does not feel the pain and she usually only makes me sweat a little. That was so not true yesterday. One of the wounds bled a lot after Dr. Dash scraped it and she used a cauterizing stick to stop the bleeding. That cauterizing stick sent my sweating into overdrive. By the time I arrived home, I was shivering and my teeth were chattering.
I am not a fan of the cauterizing stick. Blood is my friend. Blood means my wounds are healthy and healing. It is not like I have blood gushing from my wound when Dr. Dash scrapes it, it will simply take a few minutes to stop. My theory is put some extra padding on the bandage to soak up the extra blood and leave it alone. For some reason I cannot use my exceptional persuasive powers to convince Dr. Dash to let me bleed.
Dr. Dash still believes in my amazing skin growing superpower even though my wounds are mostly stagnant with the one, two punch of chemotherapy and steroids. As much as I like the steroids, they are bad for wound healing. Every time I go to the wound care center Dr. Dash tells me she knows I can heal these remaining wounds even on chemotherapy and steroids. I think Dr. Dash is delusional.
Dr. Dash’s charge nurse is new to the wound care center and yesterday Dr. Dash told the nurse why she is so confident I have a wound healing superpower. Four years ago, approximately four months after the excessive sweating and hatred of food started (and three years since I last needed to visit the wound care center), I went to the wound care center with a wound on my left hip that exposed bone. Bone is bad, very bad. Dr. Dash told me she wanted to put me in a facility because she was concerned I might die.
I used my exceptional persuasive powers to convince Dr. Dash it was simply a flesh wound and I would be able to heal it from home because I had a three-year-old daughter and could not possibly go into a facility. Dr. Dash gave me that chance and I healed that wound completely in less than a year. The wound was no longer life threatening in less than three months. Oddly enough, in July 2018 I was begging Dr. Dash to put me in a facility because I could not heal my wounds on my own. Six weeks later the tumors were found.
My piece of advice to you is make the best decision for you. The four wounds I have now are superficial and I could do more to get the wounds to finally close. However, I am not willing to go back on bed rest and miss any of my remaining time terrorizing my family. I will trade minutes of daily bandage time (and a monthly, five-hour trip to Dr. Dash) for more hours every day living the life I have left.
Until next time,
Susanne
Please check out my GoFundMe page.
The excessive sweating and associated coldness I have been experiencing are pretty much gone, except for yesterday. I get to blame my wound care doctor, Dr. Dash, for yesterday’s sweating. My sweat is my body’s reaction to pain my brain cannot feel, and I cannot feel most of my body. That inability to feel is one of the reasons it took so long to diagnose my cancer; I did not know where it hurt. (The fact nobody would order an MRI was a bigger reason.)
When you have pressure wounds, they need to heal from the inside out. A scab is a great tool for healing a scrape, but not a pressure sore. I have pretty clean wounds, but sometimes the wounds get scabby or get a small amount of dead tissue on top. When I go to the wound care center, Dr. Dash scrapes away any tissue that could impede proper healing. Some visits I do not need any scraping. Yesterday, Dr. Dash scraped three out of my four wounds.
I do not let the nurses put lidocaine on my wounds before Dr. Dash sees me because my brain does not feel the pain and she usually only makes me sweat a little. That was so not true yesterday. One of the wounds bled a lot after Dr. Dash scraped it and she used a cauterizing stick to stop the bleeding. That cauterizing stick sent my sweating into overdrive. By the time I arrived home, I was shivering and my teeth were chattering.
I am not a fan of the cauterizing stick. Blood is my friend. Blood means my wounds are healthy and healing. It is not like I have blood gushing from my wound when Dr. Dash scrapes it, it will simply take a few minutes to stop. My theory is put some extra padding on the bandage to soak up the extra blood and leave it alone. For some reason I cannot use my exceptional persuasive powers to convince Dr. Dash to let me bleed.
Dr. Dash still believes in my amazing skin growing superpower even though my wounds are mostly stagnant with the one, two punch of chemotherapy and steroids. As much as I like the steroids, they are bad for wound healing. Every time I go to the wound care center Dr. Dash tells me she knows I can heal these remaining wounds even on chemotherapy and steroids. I think Dr. Dash is delusional.
Dr. Dash’s charge nurse is new to the wound care center and yesterday Dr. Dash told the nurse why she is so confident I have a wound healing superpower. Four years ago, approximately four months after the excessive sweating and hatred of food started (and three years since I last needed to visit the wound care center), I went to the wound care center with a wound on my left hip that exposed bone. Bone is bad, very bad. Dr. Dash told me she wanted to put me in a facility because she was concerned I might die.
I used my exceptional persuasive powers to convince Dr. Dash it was simply a flesh wound and I would be able to heal it from home because I had a three-year-old daughter and could not possibly go into a facility. Dr. Dash gave me that chance and I healed that wound completely in less than a year. The wound was no longer life threatening in less than three months. Oddly enough, in July 2018 I was begging Dr. Dash to put me in a facility because I could not heal my wounds on my own. Six weeks later the tumors were found.
My piece of advice to you is make the best decision for you. The four wounds I have now are superficial and I could do more to get the wounds to finally close. However, I am not willing to go back on bed rest and miss any of my remaining time terrorizing my family. I will trade minutes of daily bandage time (and a monthly, five-hour trip to Dr. Dash) for more hours every day living the life I have left.
Until next time,
Susanne
Please check out my GoFundMe page.