I had emergency surgery for a small bowel obstruction about 6 weeks ago; full cut open not keyhole surgery. I have had terrible trouble with wound healing ever since including infection and over granulation. It is really getting me down. I am trying really hard to keep my sugars in target and mostly succeeding but my GP practice and hospital seem to never consider that I am diabetic or talk to me about that being a factor in the healing process. I just wondered if anyone else has had issues after surgery and has any advice about what I can do to help my own recovery. I am so fed up of being in pain and visiting the nurse for daily dressing changes when as soon as one bit of the wound heals another part reopens.
Kim x
ALERT GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF WOUND.
@Kimbag73
I had an abdominal operation involving incision 14ins down the centre of my body in January. It involved bowel being trapped.
I understand your distress at the slow healing, mine took over ten weeks. I thought it would never be right. If there is infection in the wound it will take ages. I also had a seroma, ( a large lump which appeared under the skin about a week after surgery) which is a collection of lymph like fluid, under part of the wound that had healed, but it kept leaking through the lower part of the wound, preventing it healing, and opening it up . The only thing that helped was tight binding of the wound on top of the clean sterile dressing. This was with a pressure pad, then very tight bandage, with close fitting girdle on top. I even bound a warm hot water bottle to the wound. One doctor suggested it needed to be drained by inserting a needle to draw off fluid. A second opinion was that it should not have a needle inserted as this could introduce infection into the abdominal cavity, whereas the infection had only been surface of the wound. Thankfully I did not have the needle aspiration. With the pressure pad it healed quickly enough after a few days. Check with your doc if pressure binding would be right for you.
If you are keeping blood glucose well managed, the only other thing I can suggest is drink plenty of water and get plenty of protein for healing. Rest plenty, but move about a bit too.
Hope this has been of use, and that you start to feel better soon.