Wound Care

Don't worry: I'm not going to tell you about the horrible wounds I saw. I'm more mature now and don't find it humorous to make my friends squirm by telling them about "gross" things I see at the hospital. Ok, I'm lying. I do enjoy making Terrence squirm. hehe.

I followed the wound team today at clinical. It was pretty chill. I got to sleep in this morning, which was by far the best part of the day. So I arrived a little before 9am and went listened to report. There was a picture of a diabetic ulcer on the table. We didn't get to see that patient because they had been visited the day before. It's probably a good thing too. That was probably too much, even for me. Parts of the muscle seemed to be missing.

I accompanied the wound nurse through various floors. Mainly, she just reassessed patients she had seen early this week. So, while it wasn't boring, it was a bit monotonous. One guy had necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating bacteria). It's caused by Group Beta-Hemolytic Streptococcus. Not very pretty. But he seemed to be healing pretty well. He was missing a lot of skin and the fascia (the cellophane-like connective tissue which covers our muscles) and had a deep hole in his neck, which the nurse packed. While his wound was pretty nasty, what really surprised me was that everyone seemed calm about it. I thought that once this bacteria started, there was no stopping it. Apparently vancomycin does wonders :D

Two patients incurred gangrene in lower extremities due to the use of vasopressors. Vasopressors block off or limit blood flow to unnecessary systems which increases blood flow to necessary ones, like the brain, kidneys and GI system. One patient had blisters all over his feet with purple toes. I won't tell you where the other patient's gangrene was, but you could probably make a pretty good guess if the re-read the first sentence of this paragraph. Moving on...

Tonight I'm home alone. Shannon is going to dinner with girls from work. I'm happy for her. She needs that time with women. And me? I'm working on a case study which I might talk about later in a later post and studying for a quiz I'll take later tonight I think.