Day 46 – Positive, my a*** !!!

Saturday 24th October 2009

Positive, I’ll give you positive !!!!!! Yes, My old friend ‘Mr Leaking’ is back. Both my dressing and my bed pad were saturated. So much for being positive...

To say I was fed up was an understatement. I seemed to be on a never ending cycle of leaking, visit to woodshed, leaking, visit to woodshed. Would this merry-go round ever stop. My joking that I would still be in for Christmas was funny a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn’t now. If things continued, it would be a reality.

However I knew that I couldn’t let this get me down, otherwise I would end up being depressed. I would have loved to have a good cry, but knew that my face and eyes would become very red, puffy and blotchy – it always did, and I couldn’t have coped with people’s sympathy. So, I counted to 10 and tried to think of something else. My Guardian Angel, for once must have been feeling sorry for me, as Sister Charlton came into my room.

She put another dressing on top of the old one as Kermit had given instructions for it not to be removed. No sooner had she put the dressing on, the whole thing fell off.
“I’ll have to change it”, she said, “I’ll meet you in the dressing room”.
I wasn’t supposed to walk that far but I wasn’t going to tell her. It took me ages to get there but it felt so good to back walking again.

She had a look at the wound and said it looked fine but wanted to consult with Sister Clarke, as the surrounding skin was quite red. Sister Clarke took a look then advised that a dry dressing and a bandage would be best. No sooner had Sister Clarke left the dressing room when Sister Charlton screamed “CAN I HAVE SOME HELP PLEASE !!!!”.
My wound had started to gush out blood. Sarah was the first nurse to arrive.
“You’ve got a right mess there, haven’t you Marie”, she said, staring at my leg, which was streaked with blood and the huge puddle on the floor, which was getting bigger and bigger. A large pressure bandage was applied in the hope that would stop the bleeding.

A little later Sister Charlton popped her head around my door.
“How’s the pressure bandage”, she asked
“It looks ok”, I replied, looking at the pressure bandage, “it hasn’t leaked through so hopefully it has stopped”.

She came back a few minutes later with a bundle of dressings and bandages.
She gingerly removing the pressure bandage. There was a huge sigh of relieve all round as it had stopped bleeding.