shishnit.org

I have considered and reconsidered writing about this topic, but since it’s affecting my life at the moment, I am going to delve in and write about it.

About a week and a half ago, Rick went to the ER. Why? Because he had a lump on his back and it was oozing a type of mucus or fluid. It was of course concerning. It turned out to be a skin abscess. This is something I was totally unfamiliar with and trust that it took me nearly a week to find anything appropriate about it online.  Google was not my friend, I don’t care about Cat skin abscesses dear Google gods!!

For those that are brave information seeking souls, or medically interested…you can read about it here or here.

I am in affect changing the “packing material” in his now open wound. This takes place twice a day. How in the hell did I learn what to do and what medical supplies to buy to avoid paying doctors extreme amounts of money to provide wound care you ask?

I asked my brother in law’s girlfriend who is a nurse. She drove Rick to the medical supply place and then they both came back and she took the time to teach me how to provide “wound care” to Rick’s wound all by myself. She even lent me her tools.

I’m basically removing a big band-aid, pulling out packing material (that’s sold in a bottle full of long stripping of packing material thread like bandages), and pushing new stuff inside. This requires a lot of alcohol wipes on the two instruments that Chrissy provided me with, both look quite nursey (nursey is that a word), no NOT nursey, they look “medically technical”, and then I take a long cotton swab, much like a long q-tip, and push the new bandage threading inside the open wound allowing some hang out for drainage, and then I put on a new BIG band-aid. And then I spend a few moments scratching around the Bandage because apparently it’s uber itchy.  I’m sooo attentive as a nurse to the husband.

The packing material looks like the below..imagine grabbing this long 1/4 inch stripping with long tweezers from a bottle where it’s all coiled up inside like a mass of thread worms and removing it, cutting it to size and then pushing clean new stuff inside with a long q-tip.  Trust me when I say finding the end of each time is not easy (from inside the bottle that is).  I have problems sometimes judging the length I will need and then after shoving it inside his wound on his back, I must use my nursey scissors and cut it shorter after it’s inserted.  I’m not a nurse but I play one for my husband twice a day!  I love you honey and I’m gonna fix your boo boo.