www.itowler.com - Ian's Home on the web

In a previous post I indicated that we would be returning to Childrens Nationwide Hospital so that her wound Vac can be changed.  Keira's initial surgical site appeared to get infected, so on the second surgery, they did not close the wound, rather they placed a wound vac on it.  The wound vac "process" involves placing a sponge in the wound, and an additional sponge on top of the wound. All of that is then taped down with a suction cup placed under the tape.  The suction cup is connected to a vacuum pump, that applies a constant vacuum to the wound site.  In theory this is supposed to help the wound heal faster as it will suction out any "gunk" and the vacuum will help stimulate the growth of granular tissue.  This does mean that Keira gets to run around with an eight foot hose connected to her stomach, but at least she is home. 

On a wound vac change day, Keria is not allowed to eat or drink for the 8 hours preceding the appointment.  When we get to the hospital, we check in, and then head upstairs to the PICU waiting room. We then get called back, and Keira is given some medicine for sedation, recently its been propofol (Diprivan) via her PIC line.  Keira fights sleep on a regular basis, so when she gets the propofol, she fights it, and ends up getting a pretty large dose for her weight... The propofol knocks here out and they undo all the tape, and remove the old sponges, clean out the wound, measure it, and re-pack it with new sponges (in theory smaller in size than the last ones..).  We had our 3rd outpatient wound vac change the other day and I thought that I would post pictures of Keira's wounds.  The pictures are below.

CAUTION: some may not find the images agreeable... so just skip them.

This is after the tape and old sponge has been removed.  The nurse is looking at the wound, getting ready to flush it out with the pink syringe that you can see in her hand.  At this point the wound is still about 1 cm deep, and about an inch and a half long.  You might be able to tell, but Keira's skin gets really red from the tape that is used.  You can also see a build up of tape / adhesive at the bottom of the image.  The next image shows the wound with a new sponge in the wound.

You can see the new sponge placed in the wound and the first layer of tape is down.  In the bottom right corner of the picture you can see a portion of the hose that gets attached to the suction cup placed on the wound. 

According to the nurse we may only have 1-2 more visits, 3 at most.  Tully hope that is the case!