So over the weekend one of my two wounds for my chest tubes opened up. It is healed at the bottom, but it has left a nasty opening and doesn’t look so good. We called the nurses and they said to steri strip it closed and keep it clean and dry and iodined, and at some point today the nurse is supposed to come by and take a look. I may be going to to the emergency room to get stitched back up, that will make for a fun day! It does look rather nasty, looks like the scab has stayed wet from the iodine and is all yellow and pus-ey looking (makes sense that a scab is made from white blood cells).
Other than that the worst part is the coughing. I seem to still have liquid in my lungs from having the tube into my lungs fro surgery. It is maybe a little better, but I am still having to use a spirometer to exercise my lungs and have someone clap my back while I cough to clear the liquid (which is clear so not infected), but it hurts like all hell, and there is no way I can do the 2 minutes on each side of my lungs as nose fills with the liquid and i have to sit up to clear my head in between switching to the other side.
The only thing that hurts as much is when I sneeze, and all the pollen outside is not helping that much, and while my nose spray helps, it is not helping much.
On the actual recovery side I am doing pretty great. I am to about 5000 steps a day and can pretty easily do a 25 minute walk without getting out of breath and there is no way I could do that before. I was getting tired walking slowly, and would have to stop a few times in 15 minutes, so there is obviously a vast improvement there, and hopefully it will continue to get better.
I seem to have stopped shedding weight as my appetite comes back, but I went into surgery at 235 pounds and am now at 219.5, so I at least have lost some weight, and hopefully with the extra exercise I can continue to lose more in the near future.
One of the hardest things is a low sodium diet. That is to keep my blood pressure down and heart rate down, and it is as hard as all hell. Have any of you every looked at all the sodium in items at the grocery store? It is sick how much sodium is in our food! I mean a low sodium diet is something under 3000 MG, though I am likely doing well under 1000, but it is so hard. No deli meat, have to cook your own chicken, and make your own salad dressing. There is so much sodium in even no fat salad dressing. And it seems most grocery stores don’t even carry the lowest sodium options that companies make (like Tuna Fish they have 50% less sodium, but the companies make another step beyond that). And bread has so much sodium in it per slice. And why does ice cream have sodium?
I have been told to cut back on Tylenol (which is all I am on for the pain), so I am having very little in a day, but still need it at times. Mainly I am getting headaches, and have some muscles aches still, and then my is killing me where it is out. Can’t wait to be able to get my back adjusted, but have to wait for my sternum to heal first, so it will be at least another 4 weeks before I can get it fixed, and that seems to be one of the main things causing me pain at this point.
Still it is amazing where I am at about 2 and a half weeks out, just hope to get this chest wound taken care of today, but still no word from the nurse as of yet.