Catch youse dufes later ...

[Thumper]

Headed to the VA Hospital. Gonna get a shingles vaccination, check in with my Agent Orange claims dude and have the first follow-up after my surgery a few weeks ago. I "hope" to find out if this will be the final surgery ... or if there may be another down the road. Who knows?

Hate to miss a half day of visiting with my sister and BIL, but I guess this is a priority.

Later dufebutts! ;)

[Niner]

Hope it's all good news, bud.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Yep, can you give us an update, Jim? Or are you gonna milk this thing another few years?

BKB

[Thumper]

Not the best news in the world. Kinda-sorta back to point A on the back. It's been just over a month since the last surgery (debridement) and there's been negligible healing and very little progress since that time, plus the wound is already filled with slough. My doc is steering away from further surgery and we're going to try the "chemical" route to see what happens. Believe it or not, we discussed MAGGOT therapy at length ... he's all for it, but the VA has been kinda avoiding that particular therapy for the time being. I guess it kinda grosses out the nurses and wound care specialists.

Anyway ... he's doing some research on the best avenue for the chemical debridement and will assign a wound care specialist to administer it over the next 1 1/2 months, then I'll go in for another follow-up. He's getting the ball rolling on the new therapy right now, so I'm in a temporary holding pattern for a few days.

Debridement is the medical removal of dead, damaged, or infected tissue to improve the healing potential of the remaining healthy tissue. Removal may be surgical, mechanical, chemical, autolytic (self-digestion), and by maggot therapy, where certain species of live maggots selectively eat only necrotic tissue.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Wonder if Big Sky's beetles could help any?

Seriously, I hope you see some progress soon. I was hoping, maybe even deluding myself, into thinking that that wound was getting smaller and smaller. Gosh, Jim. Keep your damned chin up, brother.

BKB

[Thumper]

Well, they've figured it out ... it's the healing part that's the toughie. It won't heal because there's very little blood flow to my back ... just enough to keep live tissue healthy, but not enough to heal damaged tissue. Healing is extremely slow ... so slow that the slough builds up faster than the healing can progress. Once the slough builds up, all healing comes to a halt.

We've touched on fixing the blood flow with surgery ... but ended up steering away from it as too risky. It would have involved a team of heart surgeons going through my chest, while my vascular surgeon went in through my back (all simultaneously). The guys in front would hook up some plumbing after tapping into an artery, then run a tube to the back, where my vascular surgeon would start hooking up all the plumbing to veins and capillaries to spread the blood flow across my back. A TON of serious surgery with a LONG time on a by-pass machine, so we decided it just wasn't worth the risk. Besides, I'm already a pumphead ... didn't want to make it worse. :(

The main plus is, I have all the faith in the world in my surgeon and would follow him to the end of the earth to stick with him. Even though he's now opened his own practice, he still comes in to the VA Hospital to follow through with his patients and perform surgery on patients there. We also stay in touch via phone and e-mail. He's even tackling the mountain of paperwork involved with my claim against the previous contract doctor, who started this mess, and he's now a surgeon at a major hospital. Rumor has it, the VA fired him. Big mess ... I'm not after money ... just added benefits ... most likely to be re-classified as having a "service connected disability". It's a long uphill battle, but I have some good people working on it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a doctor to throw one of his colleagues under the bus? That's what I've been working on and it's tough. My doc is in the process of doing just that. An agent with the State of Florida is handling the actual claim.

Long process but at least the ball is rolling.

[Bwana]

Sure wish they could find an easier fix for you Thump but know I'm pulling for you.

Best of luck Bud.