I am still on wound vac and I'm getting very frustrated.  My regular nurse had to go to Hong Kong again because her mom died and I've had a month of no regular nurse, nurses showing up late, not being able to do dressings, calling nurses in between visits or turning the stupid machine off in order to get a little bit of sleep before the nurse arrived in the morning.  The wound care nurse hasn't been here in 5 weeks, even though I had two different nurses call her last week saying she needed to come, including one that said I needed her to write a note for my surgeon for this Wednesday.  I've had to cut shopping trips short, I'm late for work because nurses don't show up at 8am and I HAVE to leave by 8:50am to catch the last bus to work before they start running every half hour.  The result is a LOT of money spent in cabs and my getting stressed out over running late.  I also lost a lot of sleep due to the machine acting up.  I finally got a new machine last week and it is so much quieter!  I had to use a vacation day because they sent me a nurse who tried twice and couldn't do my dressing and they had to call in a different nurse.

My last surgeon's visit was August 1.  I spent 2.5 hours getting there in the blazing heat, the cab didn't even put on the air conditioning on the way down.  The wound care nurses came and took the dressing down and my surgeon came in, glimpsed at the wound and said everything looks good, come back in a month, she was in the room all of 20 seconds!!!!  What good is that!  If she thinks she's getting away with that this week, she has another thing coming.  I want answers.  The wound vac was off for 16 days, we put it back on on July 27 because the wound wasn't healing and the skin was getting worse not better as the fluid from the wound went all over me instead of into the wound vac machine.  My wound was 5cm x 6cm and hadn't shrunk in 4 weeks.  It's now 7 weeks later, and I don't think it's changed much, I don't know for sure as the wound care nurse hasn't come back to measure it!!!  The nurses at the hospital recommended the silver version of the vac foam to "give me a boost in healing" as they thought this had gone on long enough.  I spent the next two weeks trying to get it!  The CCAC refuses to pay for it.  The wound care nurse tried a solution recommended to get around it, and it caused my dressing to fail and I spent a miserable Sunday waiting for the nurse.  They have now agreed to let me have something called promogran and they put a little piece of it in my wound at each change.  They say it's very expensive, but I looked it up and it's $35 and it lasts at least 4 or 5 changes versus Eakin Seals at $170 for a box of 20, and we a box over the same amount of time.  I guess they would rather pay large sums of money for all my supplies and the 3x per week nursing, than provide the silver foam and get rid of me sooner.  

I am so fed up, I can't do anything.  Every time I've gone out in the last month I've ended up having to cut my trip short. It's nearly impossible to go shopping as I end up with vac problems or the battery dies and I have to leave by cab.   I have 9.5 days vacation left and I can't even go away overnight for fear of having problems with the wound vac.  I want my life back.  My surgeon has had 6 vacations since my surgery, my appointment is 3 weeks later than she said to come back because of her latest vacation!  I want to know what she can do to get this COMPLETELY  over with.   I've been attached to a 6 or 7 foot tube and a machine that needs charging for 14 hours to last for 12 hours for nearly 8 months!!!!!  As I said to the nurse at the hospital, I didn't sign up for this!!!!  I was told 6 weeks recovery!  Even when she put me on the machine she said oh, a couple of months.  I want answers and she better not try to leave the room without giving me any!!!!   I'm also worried about the pain coming back on my left side when I bend certain ways.  I don't want to have gone through all this only to find out one of my hernias is back.  On top of all this, my skin issues are back, at times worse than ever, and are causing me failures of my ostomy bag.   That plus I think sometimes the fistula gets covered and I end up with a bag that lasts less than 5 hours!  

The latest problem really concerns me and I haven't even seen it up close.  When I had my last surgeon's visit, they found some hypergranulation, basically an area that has over healed.  This causes something called granulomas often around the stoma, in my case, the overgrowth is very low on my abdomen, below my wound.  In order to get it heal properly they use silver nitrate to burn the granulomas off.  It sounds worse than it is, as it doesn't hurt.  They had trouble getting rid of it all at the hospital and had been afraid they were hurting me.  The next week, the wound care nurse reported the same thing and burned it off again, and ordered silver nitrate sticks that never showed up and she hasn't been here since.  Most of the nurses that have come in since have noticed it and a few were very concerned, particularly the one who found the area to be bleeding.  She said it was kind of like a fistula, which freaked me out.  She asked the wound care nurse to come, as did another nurse and she hasn't.  This area is where my wound often leaks if either the regular or the vac dressings fail.  I blame the problem on the 16 days without the wound vac.  I'm hoping I can get better answers on what is going on on Wednesday as I can't see what's happening.

So that's what is going on with my wound.  In terms of work, I went back part time July 4, and ended up putting in a lot more hours than I was supposed to at first due to a project, but I enjoyed it immensely.  I went back full time on July 30 and promptly caught a very bad cold and was off work sick for 2 days!  It just wiped me right out, even when I went back to work the next week, I was dragging my butt!   Going back fulltime coincided with my going back on wound vac, something I wasn't counting on!  I am really enjoying being back at work, and I've gotten to spend a lot of time with one of my coworkers - we've eaten lunch together regularly and I learn a lot about life in Cuba from him.  He also gives me a ride home sometimes, which is very nice.     Then with my regular nurse disappearing for a month, I had issues with nurses not arriving on time.  So I'd end up late for work, and then be trying to make up the hours on the two days I could go in earlier.  However, the dressing failed on the Tuesday 2 weeks in a row.  All of this has gotten me pretty stressed out at times over getting my hours in.  I think I put far too much pressure on myself, and am working on that.   I am getting my work accomplished, and have made some good progress on what I need to get done in the remainder of the year.   However, some days have been very tough.  As I said, the pressure and stress I feel, I have put on myself, my boss and team have been wonderful, so I just need to learn to relax and focus on the task at hand.   I have interesting work to do, I've been analyzing some processes to find the gaps and will be meeting with our PM to discuss it this week.  I'm working on a presentation for the managers in my area and they are bringing in a consultant to work with myself and another coworker on the processes for our areas of responsibility.  I'm also setting up my career development plan this week, so hopefully will get to take some education, maybe in October, and that will take me back to my old office for a few days .

My new condo is coming along beautifully!!! I've actually seen a picture of the outside of my exact unit now.  The south tower residents began moving in this past Friday.  My tower should reach full height in October/November.  I found out that besides the Keg, my building is getting a Starbucks (yuck, but when I'm feeling too lazy to go to the Tim Horton's it will be handy!).  

We had a welcome back service at church today.  It was outside and though it was sunny, it was cold!  We had breakfast and service on the front lawn of the church, followed by a baby shower for a couple who just came to Canada about 6 months ago and will be having a little girl on Wednesday.  I found out today they are going to name her Michelle.  It's their second child, and the dad isn't working yet and they had nothing for the baby, so we all pitched together to help them.  They are a lovely couple, and he has some great IT experience, including with IBM India.  I've submitted his resume to IBM here and he had interviewed for a contract with my old team a while before that, but no luck yet.  I hope he finds something soon!

I think this is long enough, I will try to update more often, especially after my surgeon's visit Wednesday.