Saturday, October 30, 2010

Decision

Yesterday the drain came out, followed up by a flood from the hole...
It was not pretty or pleasant.
"Treatment strategies for persistent seroma include aspiration, drain placement, sclerosis, and surgery."
Well, the first two so far are not working.
We all agreed that:
1. I am not healing and will not heal unless something else is done
2. That something else will be chemical treatment, called sclerotherapy (or sclerosis). They will inject some alcohol based solution into the space (cavity) where the seroma accumulates. That should aggravate the lining of the tissues and facilitate the subsequent healing. That will require insertion of one or more drain tubes and possible multiple treatments.
3. It that will not work, I must have another surgery that will be performed to open up the cavity and scrape up the lining.

The problem is that the 'cavity' is almost my whole belly. Second problem is that my doctor does not want any abrasive chemicals to aggravate my muscles stitches. He wants them to heal first, so we will buy some time by visiting him twice weekly for the seroma extraction using syringe.

Well, what can I say...
Overall, I feel (as I wrote before) that something is happening internally. I generally feel sick, no energy, no appetite, no restful sleep, swelling in the abdomen, pain on the sides and back...

I still function OK - but it takes very large effort.
I can be very tired, go to bed, and sleep only one hour. That's it.
In the long term this is not sustainable.