Wound Care of the Vanities

I love my wife, I really do. However.......

One of the things I do at work is help the nurses change bandages. This usually requires two people due to the nature of the wounds we deal with. One thing about these wounds, be they from bedsores or the aftermath of flesh-eating bacteria, they will always occur in the most inaccessible places, and difficult to get to. So one does the actual dressing change while the other holds the limb or body off the bed, sometimes using a free hand to help open packaging or tossing away bloody gauze. At any rate, I have been rather well versed in the art of dressing changes, at least I thought I was. Then came time for ME, THE Michael, solo, to perform what should be a straight-forward change of the dressings on my wife's poor finger, which now resembles something like a burst sausage.
The one great advantage of this activity in a critical care unit is the condition of the person we usually perform it on. They are heavily sedated, or given powerful painkillers, might be on a vent, and are often tied down. Another-words, even though you know that no matter how tender you try to be, sometimes it's gonna hurt, but you don't have a fully conscious, mobile, and quite opinionated subject on your hands. You can get it done.

No such advantage here. The wife doesn't do bondage, so tying her down was not an option. Ditto the ball gag. The demerol has proven to be adequate for general pain relief, but not much help while the wound is being "assaulted". The gauze over the wounds soaks up the blood and drainage, creating a nice hardened glue that has to be peeled off the raw wound, and it's no wonder keeping her hand steady while I'm trying to grab something with pin-point accuracy is a trying proposition. Plus there's this trust issue. Yes, I touch things while desperately trying not to, and she goes into it KNOWING I'm going to do it, creating a vicious cycle of me trying to get this stuff off as painlessly as possible and her jerking around and........sigh.......where's those restraints?

Plus, my wife, since it's HER hand I'm trying to dress, has already laid claim to a Doctorate in Wound Care, and is trying to instruct me while I'm trying to concentrate and get this over with. Now I'm caught between trying not to hurt her and wanting to bitch slap her at the same time. She doesn't mean to make it seem like I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but once it's all over with, I stalk away thinking I should get an academy award for wound changes under trying circumstances not involving getting up, throwing the scissors at her, and telling her to dress the damn thing herself. I think she notices the cloud I'm walking away under, and as the agony of my inept attempt to take care of her eases off, she regains her sense of decorum and tiptoes all around an effort to tell me she's sorry and thank you for doing this. Thank Bob for patience............without it Jack would be one unhappy camper.

The wound cultures came back, and not surprisingly, she was positive for MRSA, that nasty bug we put patients in isolation for, since it is resistant to many of the antibiotics we use today. She could have gotten it off of me, I'm probably so covered in it by now, her Mother, who's had her bouts with it, or any number of places, including the money she handles at work. No wonder the damn finger tried to explode on her. Expecting even the simplest of procedures to resolve themselves without complications these days is naive to say the least. I just hope these antibiotics she's on don't cause more problems than they solve.

Well, I have an answer to all this finger angst. Ketchup. Yep, ketchup has natural mellowing agents that take away that feeling of impending doom, strengthens your respect for your spouse, and keeps families intact. (this last paragraph was provided courtesy of the Ketchup Advisory Board.)


OK, I performed wound care, vacuumed the dog hair off the carpet, washed dishes, swept and mopped the kitchen floor, took out the garbage, tied out the goats, made lunch, and am preparing to do several loads of laundry. Then I have dinner to prepare. Will this "vacation" ever end?