It's called an Ilizarov sponge, and there's a slit up the side of it, so it can open up and wrap around the pin itself. Then it just sits on top of the pin site, I lower a compression clip down on top of it, and that's it, the pin site is covered.
When I left the hospital, my doctor gave me a pack of these sponges, because they are impossible to get outside of a hospital. And now I'm down to my last set of sponges.
Now I'll have to go to a more complicated system of folding up sterile gauze, then cutting it with scissors that I have to sterilze each time with rubbing alcohol. It's just an annoying extra step in an otherwise already complicated process of cleaning my pin sites.
First I have to boil water to mix with some hydrogen peroxide. We tried today to get some sterile saline solution from the drug store, in order to avoid having to boil water every single time, but apparently you need a prescription for saline solution. Um, what? Is there a way to get high from drinking it or something?
Each pin site needs to be cleaned with sterile q-tips, and I can only use each q-tip for basically one swipe. And I have to be very careful not to touch my leg, or the fixator, or the pin itself. Touching the pin site with a q-tip that has touched something else can cause infection.
The hydrogen peroxide stings a little, but not too much, because it's diluted by the water. It's necessary to remove any protein crusts that form around the pin site. These do not come off in the shower, and can pick up bacteria easily, so they have to be removed.
I also have to clean the length of the pin itself, being careful not to touch the pin site with the q-tip I'm using to clean the pin. For each pin site, I use about ten sterile q-tips. Since I only have four pin sites, it's not so horrible. If I had an Ilizarov fixator instead of a monolateral fixator, I'd have ten or more pin sites, so I'm lucky in that regard.
Ashley and Wes were nice enough to pop over for a visit the other night. Thanks guys! Visiting me gets you an automatic picture on the blog:
4 comments:
It is an honor to have my picture on the blog.
I'm begging you, please post the picture of Wes's mullet.
Get well, soon!!!
i'm still waiting for the picture of kelly with the hospital clown.
i'm begging you, please post more pics of wes! mrrrow!!! what a babe.
love
anonymous
Really? I didn't know what those cubic spongey things and rubbery washer things were when I first read your page. I use precut drain sponges, which are pretty easy to come by. My home health people supply me with all the stuff I use, but this is the exact type of drain sponge I use - http://www.qualitymedicalsupplies.com/page/QMS/PROD/WC-EXC/68-7086.
Every day, each of my pin sites gets flushed with saline, swabbed with an iodine swab, then a layer of Xeroform under a drain sponge under the gauze that goes around my leg. It seems like a bit more work than yours, especially considering that I can't get my fixator wet.
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