Thursday, March 13, 2008

New foot update - 3/12/08 appointment

The doctor’s visit went well yesterday. I didn’t get a picture of the foot but I can tell it’s improving. The amount of silver sponge bandage they put in the hole was smaller than last week’s. The doctor’s notes from the prior week were on the table so I read them. The notes said that Ron had a long way to go with this but it was improving. It’s good to know that there has been improvement (the bone of the foot is no longer showing) but tough for Ron to hear that he had a long way to go. Oh well, at least we do have hope that he’s got a positive outcome in his future.

The nurses who re-dressed his foot were not as good as the one from last week. They had a hard time getting a good seal and the vacuum wasn’t “sucking” at all. There was no compression to the sponge. I was watching them very closely because if the silver sponge touches good skin, it causes the good skin to break down. I wanted to make sure they had tape under the sponge as well as on top of it. The procedure goes like this:
1. Measure how big the actual hole is and cut a piece of sponge to fill it.
2. Tape over the whole thing so that it’s sealed.
3. Poke a hole (good sized) in the tape covered sponge to attach to the long “feeder” sponge (more on that later).
4. Tape up the leg in an area wider than the long feeder sponge.
5. Attach the feeder sponge to the hole and tape securely.
6. Tape the whole area again, covering the feeder sponge and the foot sponge.
7. Attach a larger feeder sponge the diameter of the suction tubing and tape down.
8. Poke a hole in the new round feeder sponge.
9. Attach the suction tubing.
10. Tape the whole thing down again.
11. Hook up the vacuum pump and see if the sponge starts compressing. If not, there’s an air leak somewhere that has to be found.

They had three air leaks in the thing and it took the physician’s assistant to find them.

The IV schedule isn’t hard but this morning the solution didn’t seem to want to infuse properly. I don’t know what I did wrong but it finally was done after 45 minutes. It’s supposed to infuse over 30 minute period but it kept shutting the pump off and I’d have to reset it. I was a bit late to work but oh well…

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