Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Over the past 3 1/2 weeks I have worked in a wound care clinic two days a week. These patients come in every single week and see a 1cm difference on a good week. I can only imagine how difficult it is for these patients to drag themselves into the office (the majority of them either wheelchair bound or amputees) week after week to see such little progress. BUT....the wounds do heal, slowly but surely. Seeing someone get discharged after coming there for 4 months etc is such a good feeling and they are so happy.

One of my favorite little ladies is 91 years ago and is brought there by her daughter who is 70 something, can you imagine that dynamic duo? They are beyond precious. When I first started seeing her she would yelp in pain as her wound was cleaned and it was terribly sensitive. Today, it was so tiny and didn't hurt anymore. She didn't make a peep. After getting double layer compression wraps to get the swelling down from her venous insufficiency, the wound was able to heal.

I will tell you though, the saddest and most heartbreaking patients in wound care are the nursing home patients. God bless them. Pressure ulcers are a horrible thing to witness, and I didn't realize how easy it was to get them (we had a couple people who had them simply from sitting so long during dialysis treatments). The nursing home patients/paraplegics are bed bound or wheelchair bound 24/7 and get no relief from putting pressure on they bony prominences. Or, they have deformities and contractures and their own skin rubs together in a way that causes the ulcers. Its hard for me to handle it, because there truly is not much you can do. They become palliative cases and you just try to avoid infections or progression, but the wounds don't usually heal completely. In these patients I honestly wasn't as concerned about their wounds as I was just talking to them and patting their hands. I will think about them for a long time to come.

I learned an incredible amount about wound care, something we aren't taught much in school. I will be able to take a lot from my experiences at the wound care center and apply them to those patients who have chronic wounds from diseases such as diabetes, venous insufficiency, peripheral vascular disease, osteomyelitis, etc....because we all know those things run rampant in healthcare and they're are lots of patients who need to be treated.