Lather, Rinse, and...Repeat.
SONOFABITCH!
That was the sound my brain made. My brain made that sound because Dr. Rees, the plastic surgeon overseeing the continuing care of my pressure sore had just ended a sentence with the phrase, “debride it again.” This was in direct contradiction to what his physician assistant. Mr. De-Hong, had concluded not three minutes earlier before stepping out of the exam room. The exam room that I was in, side-lying on an exam table with my left ass check exposed. Three minutes prior, my brain wasn't making all sorts of ruckus trashing the joint because, at that point in time, Mr. De-Hong had finished telling me what I wanted to hear. That conversation went pretty much as follows:
That was the sound my brain made. My brain made that sound because Dr. Rees, the plastic surgeon overseeing the continuing care of my pressure sore had just ended a sentence with the phrase, “debride it again.” This was in direct contradiction to what his physician assistant. Mr. De-Hong, had concluded not three minutes earlier before stepping out of the exam room. The exam room that I was in, side-lying on an exam table with my left ass check exposed. Three minutes prior, my brain wasn't making all sorts of ruckus trashing the joint because, at that point in time, Mr. De-Hong had finished telling me what I wanted to hear. That conversation went pretty much as follows:
De-Hong: Hello Dan, how are you?
Me: Pretty good.
De-Hong: Has your pressure sore gotten any better?
Me: I think so. It's definitely gotten a lot smaller in the last month.
De-Hong: Let me take a look. [Exams the sore] Yes, this is much better. I think we can can schedule the flap surgery, now. Let me consult wish Dr. Rees.
De-Hong: Has your pressure sore gotten any better?
Me: I think so. It's definitely gotten a lot smaller in the last month.
De-Hong: Let me take a look. [Exams the sore] Yes, this is much better. I think we can can schedule the flap surgery, now. Let me consult wish Dr. Rees.
Dr. Rees entered the room and examined the state of the wound. His concern was that, although the wound has filled in quite well and has stayed clean, by poking around in it with his finger, he was able to determine that there isn't yet sufficient tissue growth over the bone that was exposed by surgery to debride the sore back in October. In addition, he could feel that there was still some residual infection in that bone. My mother asked how he could determine that about the bone simply by touch; did it feel “squishy?” He responded that, “Yes. I guess that is a good word for it.”
We asked several more questions about the time table from this point forward. I confirmed what I thought I was hearing, that they would be opening the wound back up, cleaning out the remaining damaged bone and starting me back on another six week course of IV antibiotics. At which point in time, then they would be able to go ahead with the flap surgery to close the wound completely. That all sounded to me like the past two months and ten days of lying around doing Jack had gotten me all of right back to where I already had been. I stated how frustrated that I've been dealing with this since August and now this seems like a step in the wrong direction. Dr. Rees countered with something about how if they attempted to close the wound now there was a fifty percent chance it would break down into a sore again and then we'd be starting all over from square one. Despite the fact that he went on to talk about how debriding the wound now would allow them to close it in six weeks, I had already heard all I needed to know. Plus, it was hard to concentrate on Dr. Rees with the din, blue streak of obscenities my brain continued spewing. At the end of his remarks, I was able to focus long enough to hear Dr. Rees conclude his remarks about pressure sores with, “You have no idea.” As in, “You have how bad these sores can get,” and, “You have no idea how long they can take to heal.”
Well, far be it for me to dispute his medical expertise, but I'm pretty confident at this point that I have an idea. In fact, I think I have an excellent idea. Sure, he sees these things every day and therefor has an excellent gage on what constitutes the varying levels of just how severe these sores can be. And yes, my sore pales in comparison to people that lose toes and legs because of severe complications. But when he starts throwing around numbers like “six weeks” as if they're just some drop in the calendar bucket, then I know he can't really comprehend what this is like. I should have asked him, “Do you have any idea how many times Scrubs is televised during the day?* No? I didn't think so. You have no idea because you spend your day doing cool things like seeing patients, performing stomach staples, and generally getting to leave the house. I know the answer because despite reading books, watching movies, surfing the Internet, and doing my best to avoid watching mind-numbing TV, I'm still lying on the couch for upwards of ten hours a day with Shit to do and have been doing so since August. When you casually talk about prescribing another six week course of antibiotics, you may have read about the potential side effects, but do you know that Vancomycin dries my eyeballs out so that my contacts are always blurry and then they wrinkle up and painfully get stuck in the corners of my eyes? No? Of course not.”
But there's really no point in asking those questions because there isn't any better course of action. So, on January 16th –and it's the 16th because that's the next open surgery slot—I will go in to have the same surgery performed that I already had done back in October. I'll get discharged on the 17th, and then it will be the beginning of the next week until the orders come through to start the IV antibiotics. Six weeks from then will be the first week of March. Will I immediately be scheduled for my flap surgery? I doubt it, so I'm going to estimate that happens in the middle of that month. I already know the rehab protocol coming out of that surgery is at least two solid weeks of bed rest before even limited sitting is allowed. Now it's April, barring no setbacks.
'Tis the season.
*On an average weekday, Scrubs is on 8 times, on 3 different networks. In my opinion it really went downhill after about Season 4, just about the time Zach Braff's head got fat. They've been phoning it in for about two years now.
