2 Weeks 2 Days Post-Op

This morning I am 2 weeks 2 days post-op. I am sitting on a loss of 21 lbs so far! I have had a lot of tiny struggles this past week that have kept me from updating my blog. I had an appointment to have my staples removed on Friday December 7th. The day before I noticed some swelling in my main incision and some discoloration. I was also in a lot more pain than usual. Instead of panicking I just decided that everything was okay and I would go to my appointment the following day to make sure. I'm really glad I had an appointment because my incision had become infected. That morning while taking a shower, one of the scabs loosened up and my incision began leaking a lot of a pinkish red fluid. I got really scared and worried, got out of the shower and called my husband, Anthony, right away. He is a medic and always knows what to do! He told me to cover it and he would be home in 30 minutes. Whenever he got home he took my temperature and I had a fever, another sure sign of infection. Whenever we finally went to the doctor, they confirmed Anthony's suspicions. I was healing perfectly on 5 of the incisions, but the largest and most painful of them was indeed infected. They ended up calling in several doctors to look at it to decide what course of action they should take, and I must say I WAS NOT pleased to hear the outcome. I am extremely sensitive to pain and I have really bad anxiety when it comes to wound care. They decided to remove all of the staples from every incision, including the infected one which was already super painful. They offered me lidocane to numb the area and I GLADLY accepted. After what they did to me, I don't know how it wasn't mandatory! They took all of the small incision staples out first and placed steri-strips over them. That part was a piece of cake! The part to come, not so much. They then removed the staples from the main incision. The doctor noticed that there was a very large amount of fluid in the cavity and decided that before proceeding it would have to be drained. He grabbed a scalpel and re-cut a small portion of the top that had already healed shut over the previous week. It gave them a small opening for fluid to escape. They began pressing all around the incision trying to remove as much fluid as possible. It was terrible pressure and even with the lidocane it didn't feel good at all. After about 5-10 minutes, they still weren't getting the results that they wanted and they decided to go deeper. He ended up cutting the entire incision back open and part inside the wound that had already healed. He wanted to check for a hernia while I was open and he had to stick his finger in my wound. He had pretty big hands and sunk his entire finger in there. He pulled at every angle possible and even being numb I have never been in more pain in my entire life. It was so terrible. If Anthony hadn't been there holding my hand I probably would have ripped a hole in the chair cushion. We were then informed that it needed to be packed with gauze and that this would be a reoccurring thing that we would do at home. Again, Thank God my husband is a medic! They packed me full of gauze soaked in saline, bandaged me up and sent me on my way. My husband has been doing this for me twice a day since then. Because they counteracted all healing up to that point the gave me a refill on my pain meds which has been a complete lifesaver when it comes to having my wound cleaned and repacked. I go in every Monday and Friday to have my wound inspected and so far everything is going well. It is starting to be extremely itchy and I hope that we only need to do it for another week or so! Because they refilled my pain meds I get sick when I eat, which isn't fun at all. Nausea is probably the worst feeling I've been getting lately. I have been having a hard time getting in the necessary amounts of protein because of now nauseous my medicine makes me. I am going to post some pretty graphic photos below of my incision and what it looks like during being cleaned and packed. I forgot to take profile photos, but will try to do that tonight.