The Vac's Installed.

I got approved for the Wound Vac as a charity case; the thing arrived via UPS yesterday. Big, bulky box, mostly filled with smaller cartons of foam dressings and catch-canisters. The unit itself is about the size of a stack of 6 DVD cases.

The first dressing got installed this morning. All it is is a piece of foam cut to fit in the incision (which is about 1" x 1" by 1-1/2" deep now) with a sheet of plastic "drape" over it, something like Saran Wrap with adhesive on one side. Once that's arranged, you cut a hole in the middle of the wrap, arrange the vacuum fitting over that, and hook the tubing up to the machine.

My belly's been mostly numb around the incision site from day 1, so there's no pain involved, but when the vac is first turned on there's a moment where the suction is noticeable. Outside of that, there's no noise or anything. About the only time I notice the thing is when I need to move around--now I'm tethered to it by several feet of tubing.

So now I've gone from Frankenbelly...




...to Vacu-Belly!


That looks a lot worse than it really is. The red marks are from the staples, which came out a month ago.

The Wound Care folks say this thing will have me healed up in about 2 weeks. It'll be about time--I've been aching to take a kayak trip up Bayou Texar, or even to take a simple shower.