Cinder-Livvy

Cinder-Livvy

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Hole in My Head, Hole in Her Chest

I'll start with Friday 10/19.  Brian was changing Olivia into her jammies and noted aloud that her incision looked red.  I went over to check it out and sure, it was red and raised in a couple of spots, but this was no surprise as the weather change in the area had led to getting out the nice zipper pjs which just also happen to line up perfectly the Olivia's incision line.  She has dry skin that is impossible to keep lotioned up frequently enough, paired with her busy little hands and I wasn't shocked to see the way that it looked.  Pre-hospital stay in September, she actually picked enough to make it scab in a few areas.  If you think I'm making excuses, I'm not - rather just painting a picture of how easy it is to find yourself in smooth easy living to the hospital in a matter of 72 hours.

Saturday went by and I noted that Liv's incision looked unchanged and kinda funky in a few spots but definitely no different than Friday.  Enter Sunday morning - Brian again changing her called me over in a hurry to check out this accumulation or blister looking thing on her chest about 1" up from the base of her incision.  Argh.  How did that happen?  I looked feverishly from every angle to see if I could see a stitch and nothing looked amiss other than this accumulation beneath her skin and clearly in a very important area.  We added grid lines to chart any peripheral redness to make sure that we knew where it was at 9:30 and mark the progression throughout the day.  I'd peek at it throughout the day noting it was getting larger as the day progressed.  Sunday night during bath, said blister started to soften and ooze.  Enter Mommy all scrubbed in armed with sterile gauze to blot away the moisture - which eventually led to draining a good amount of purplish fluid off this area.  A mind blowing amount actually and once it was empty, poof it was completely gone and sunken.  I cleaned the exterior gently with a q-tip and then dried it off to dress it loosely with another sterile gauze pad and cloth tape only on two sides to leave it alone.

Meanwhile, as a precaution, we became hyper vigilent taking Olivia's temperature, me running out to get one of those new 3 second forehead scanning thermometers...which she hates.  Just to make sure that we were staying ahead of any looming disaster.  Monday, she charted fine, ate well and I waited for Brian to change the dressing because it's really a two person job for one to restrain and the other to dress the area.  Greeted with this mind blowing area of her incision actually OPENING UP.  There was now a gaping hole on her actual surgical incision where there had been a blister 24 hours prior.  Completely stunned by our findings, we figured get the sucker clean and dressed again and get in touch with the hospital.  So I took Hydrogen Peroxide (DISCLAIMER: do not do this regularly or with full concentrate on these kiddos) swabbed the area down with a qtip again and dressed it once more with a sterile gauze pad taped down on two sides to allow air in and dry the area out.  Good news was there was no oozing or puss forming around anywhere. Sigh

Stay tuned for part two

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