An afternoon's misadventure

Yesterday afternoon.

A painful adventure. Painful.

Since last Tuesday I've had a tight strip of clear skin/tape over the top of my operation scar. And since last Tuesday, the base of the scar (approx 1cm) has had a greater than average build up of blood.

My post-operative care sheet said that I could remove the tape after three days (if I wanted), but given I've got internal stitches and was paranoid I'd remove the tape and see my innards fall out, I kept it on.

Until yesterday lunchtime that was, when I wanted to remove it and make sure the last 1cm of scar wasn't infected (or something).

So, I was in the kitchen, with my underpants around my knees, peeling back the tape painful millimetre by painful millimetre.

Twenty minutes into the exercise and I had reached the 'pooled blood' section. And that's where it all went wrong.

As I peeled back the tape I clearly pulled off an ill-formed scab. Instantly, blood spilled forth and started running down my leg and into my underpants. Ooops.

As I staggered to get some tissues to dab the disaster I realised I'd be better to take this project to the shower.

So I did.

After another twenty five minutes of peeling and pain and blood and dabbing and procrastination I started to feel very light- headed. Very. In fact, I was close to passing out.

So, with shower nozzle in one hand and painful groin in the other I leaned out of the shower and sucked back as much oxygen as I could. And sucked. And sucked. And sucked. To no avail. I couldn't shake the light-headedness.

I made a decision to rip off the last few millimetres of tape (owwwwwwww) and grabbed for a towel, wrapped it round myself and went and lay down on the bed - all the while checking to see if my wound was bleeding/leaking. It was a little, but clearly the inward stitches were fine, but the surface tear still hadn't healed as well as the rest of the scar. As I sat there freezing I thought, 'what to do?'.

I rung my Jo (at work) and told her of my predicament. She said 'we're off to A & E'. She came home and we went.

Me with a wad of tissues stuffed in my underpants. Nice.

A two hour wait in an extremely uncomfortable chair lead to a 5 minute procedure in which firstly a doctor and then a nurse squeezed the scar to check it wasn't infected (it wasn't they said). However, they were both lucky they didn't have to head off to the dentist to have their teeth replaced 'cos I could easily have punched both of them in the chops for doing that.

The nurse then cleaned the site with alcohol (owwwwwwwww) and then put some butterfly clips and a bandage on it (owwwwww).

Done.

They weren't too concerned at all. I'm still not convinced it'll heal brilliantly. And am frankly bored of being sore.

Will keep you posted.

Pee