May 222004
 

So, the nurses and doctors don’t work weekends, especially not long weekends, and I’ve just become the official Spike wound-care-at-home expert.
I’ve been furnished with tools and tape and gauze and strips of sterile “wound packing material” and sterile water and a squirty syringe.

It’s my job to let Spike go “ouchy ouchy” and peel off the tape from the last bandage change (cos she likes it better if she does it herself), and then I make like a power-washer with a teeny-tiny pressure hose in Spike’s open wound thing(which is 1 inch deep, for those who like to wince) and then (maintaining a sterile field) carefully cram as much stuffing strip as possible into all the crevasses of her little 2nd belly button (about a foot of strip, for the morbidly curious) and then cover it with sterile gauze, tape that down, and then finish up with a self-stickum post-surgical pad (kind of a tremendous bandaid).

Every three or so days, we go back to the doctor for a professional wound-stuffing.

The doctor says it may take a month or more for this to close up, so I’m betting that Spike is going to despise the sight of me and my little tools, bottles, and pads before we’re done. I’m going to haul out my Cirque Du Soleil clown nose and try wearing that on alternate stuffings. For variety, y’understand.

-Elaine

 Posted by at 2:46 pm

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