Thursday, November 18, 2010

Second Surgery and updates (will add more pictures when I find my camera)

As a lot of you know my first surgery with skin grafting was a success! I can move my arm 100% still and no sign of returning H.S as of yet.  It still doesn't look like a regular armpit but it's getting better and the most important thing is that it does NOT hurt!

Some pics from the second surgery

From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
This is right before I got my staples out so around day 21

From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
This was the second day in the hospital before the Tegaderm broke open and made a mess :-/


The second surgery was on September 20th. Again I was in the hospital for 5 days and had home nursing for 4 weeks. Everything about this surgery was backwards from the first one. This time my arm was causing me the most pain! My donor site did not hurt much at all after the first few days. So awesome that I did not have the "my leg is on fire!!" feeling!  

There was a smaller area on this graft that did not take it was about 3cm in diameter that did not take, which is great compared to last time.

However, I do not have full range of motion and probably never will. It's about 92% which isn't bad and I can live with that. Considering I had almost 0 before the surgery. 

So after 6 weeks the small spot that was open healed very nicely.  Everything was great for 2 weeks nothing hurt at all. Now my graft split open where the small area was before, except it is bigger now. An area at the back of the graft split open and an area that covers almost the whole bottom edge of the graft has split open.  It is very painful and sort of just like it was before I had the surgery. I see the surgeon on Tuesday and we will see what she says then.

Thanks for all the emails!

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Day 49

So I figure I'll post that newer picture now. I can raise my arm 100% no pain at all. YAY! I am going into surgery for the other side on the 20th of September. It should be a much smaller area, which is also good. I can't wait till I can move that arm too! I think I'm going to try and throw a slide show of pictures from the beginning up soon.... just have to figure out how first. Have a good day!


From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Day 39

Hey everyone!!! So until this week I did not realize how many people were/are following this blog. I've gotten 100+ emails and comments/messages on almost every forum I post to wondering what is wrong and why I haven't updated.... I'm sorry! I've been very busy. On the 30th of July we FINALLY closed on our house that we had been trying to close on since April.

Everything is going great with my surgery. I only have to wear a dressing on the small part where the graft did not take. The best part is I almost have full range of motion in my arm! It feels amazing to be able to move it like I used to :D The only set back I've had is the last time I was at the wound clinic to see my surgeon she left me with a nurse to put my dressing on. Now this normally would be fine, but she decided she was going to put tape on my graft site.... now yes I understand that it is technically skin now.... but it is BRAND new skin. It's very thin (they scrapped off the scab... it looks great). and fragile.  I wasn't very happy as both my husband and I said maybe we shouldn't put tape there. Needless to say the next morning when my nurse came .... she was pissed and it hurt so bad to have it pulled off. Worst part is that it pulled off my skin... so now that part is just like where the graft didn't take, but it's looking better. I will never let that nurse do a dressing change there again. So as a reminder this is what my armpit looked like
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
And this is what it looked like on day 30 
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
Very big difference. Now the reason I picked that photo even tho it is sorta blurry is because you can still see the area towards my back where the graft didn't take, but you can also see the area in the middle toward the bottom that is shiny... and that is where the nurse stuck the tape.   I will update with a more recent photo tomorrow when I change the dressing on the back.
Overall I have to say this surgery was the best thing I've ever done. Yes 5 weeks of not being able to move your arm or barely do anything sucks, but I can lift my arm now. This means that when I have my other one done I can go back to doing the things I love. I will continue to update on my progress w/ pictures when I can. And I will still answer emails & messages regarding anything you may have to say. Thank you all so much for your support!

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Day 17

Nurse came and changed my dressing for some reason I think the pictures look worse today than yesterday. But that is just me....
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
Still looks like it's healing nicely though.

My donor site! Got to take the Tegaderm off which was really really painful :( But it's okay because it was dry and pink so I don't have to have anything covering it. Except for the small amount of Vaseline that I need to put on it.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

I guess that's all I have for now... everything seems to be going great. Much better than with my last surgery. I can't wait until I get to have my arm down at my side... and to see if I have a frozen shoulder or if I can raise it up with full ROM.  Guess that's still a couple weeks away..

Day 16

Had the appointment with my surgeon today.. The wound clinic is not my favorite place to go, it seemed dirty and the first nurse I got couldn't even take my blood pressure...even I can take blood pressure without screwing it up 5 times...by the way she never got it right. Got my staples out! It only hurt slightly with a couple of them, so that was good. She cleaned off the dried blood and the dressed my graft back up. The picture is sideways... and I'm not flipping it... lol
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
It is looking really good... starting to heal up really nice. I still have to put the xeroform on it because there are some spots that aren't healing as quick. It hurts a lot less now that the staples are out. :)

My donor site... she forgot to look at. I forgot about it as well. I was scared the staples were gonna hurt coming out. I called the office and asked about it. She said I could take it off:
-If it was pink and wet then I would have to put anti-biotic ointment on it and cover it with gauze
-If it was pink and dry then I could leave it open, but should put Vaseline on it so it doesn't dry out and crack because new skin doesn't sweat.

Again I didn't take a picture for it today, but I will tomorrow after the stuff comes off.

Have a good night!

Monday, July 26, 2010

Day 15

I got a call at 8am from the supplier asking if I had received what had been ordered yet...I told her no and she said she would figure out whats going on seems how I should have received them on the 23rd... the day after she ordered them.  My nurse then showed up around 12:30ish and she had enough supplies to last one more day and said I should have my supplies by tomorrow, which is fine cause I meet with the surgeon in the morning and they will change my dressing. She took the dressing off my arm and the xenoform had gotten stuck to the area with no skin graft, but it didn't hurt when she peeled it off....thank goodness. However, it did bleed some, but not much again. She dressed it as best she could, we no longer have the keflex gauze that we have been wrapping around my arm to keep the ABD in place without having to use much tape so we have regular role gauze that you can buy from Meijer, which just doesn't work as well and requires more tape to keep it from rolling. She also has to use one medium ABD and one small ABD tapped together to make it big enough. Thank god we had the xenoform, barely enough but it worked. I'm not seeing a big change in the graft site compared to yesterday. There is a little less meshing I suppose...
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

I didn't take a picture of the donor site, but it is a little more dark and has a few more cracks. Really hoping she takes the Tegaderm off for good .....

My skin is slowly becoming not so dry. My hands are still peeling, my feet are still rough, but my face feels much better.

As of right now I wont be healed until a couple days after school starts if it goes as planned. I should be having my surgery in early October late September sometime and I don't feel that missing 5 weeks out of the semester will be a good idea. How do I catch up from that? Especially if I don't understand something. Going to school in the fall is not looking promising, but if I get my second one done in October I should be healed by January when winter semester starts. But we will figure that out more as the time comes.

Wish me luck at the doctors appointment tomorrow!!

Day 14

 I woke up to find that my hands were so dry they were pealing... I was really confused my hands have NEVER been dry.. or at least not that dry. I just couldn't figure it out. I put lotion on and ignored it. When the nurse got here we realized that my supplies had not came and she ordered them on the 22nd. Luckily she had some extra stuff so we could get my dressing changed. The area where the graft did not take bled a little, but not as much as before. The graft site is looking okay, there is still some dry blood on the top part. My staples don't hurt nearly as much as they did before.. yay!
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
I highly doubt I will get my staples out Tuesday based on the fact that you can still see some meshing. We will see what it looks like tomorrow...

My nurse says the donor site is looking great... It's dark brown/red in color with cracks in it, which seems weird to me... but what do I know lol. It doesn't hurt anymore so that's great. Hopefully I get to have the Tegaderm off for good tomorrow!
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

Later on that night I reached up to scratch my face and realized that my face was dryer than my hands had been this morning. At this point I was really confused. I've been drinking plenty of water, haven't put lotion on but I don't normally anyway. I decided I was going to look up side effects of the Neurontin... and go figure one of the is very dry skin. At least I knew what was causing it now. Seems as my leg is not burning anymore I figure I don't need to take it. Hopefully my skin recovers soon, I have been using lotion. Another side effect of the Neurontin is back pain, which I figure explains the awful back pain I had one day.

Going to write todays .....

No post the 25th of July

Sorry no post yesterday.... Will post it with todays later... I was to sick today. Thanks!

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Day 13

The nurse didn't hurt me pulling off the xeroform again today nor did she touch my staple that hurts yay!!! I don't feel like the graft has made a lot of progress the last few days....at least not like it was. The is still some meshing in the middle and parts that need to heal in where it was, you just can't tell that it was a mesh. I know if that's not solid by Tuesday I really wont get those staples out. So hopefully it starts healing a little faster between now and then.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
I took a picture of my donor site, but it hasn't changed since yesterday so I don't see the point in posting it. I'll post one tomorrow though regardless of if there is change or not.

Thanks

Friday, July 23, 2010

Day 12

My nurse came around 11am today and brought something that is supposed to be a no tape system so I didn't need much tape on me. Unfortunately it didn't work very well. So we went back to our old system, which still doesn't put to much tape on me so it's nice. The site where the skin graft didn't take bled a little after she took off the dressing, she cleaned it up for me and said that it was still healing. The bleeding is a good sign cause it means I still have blood flowing to the area. The graft is looking alright about the same as yesterday I think. The nurse took extra care not to touch the staple that hurt yesterday, which was great. It only hurts slightly as I'm sitting here, unless I move which I'm not supposed to do so I guess it helps me.  The nurse also called her business and made sure that they blocked that other nurse that I did not like from coming to do my care. I also found out she only works every third weekend, so she works this weekend then the next two I have to have a different nurse which is not cool.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

You can see that the mesh is starting to heal together which is awesome!

My donor site is looking good still not to much different I don't think, but then I haven't compared them side to side yet. 
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
Yes there is still that wonderful piece of tape that blocks some stuff, but eventually it will come off or you can see the full thing when the Tegaderm comes off.
That's all for tonight.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Day 11

My nurse came around 1pm today... so yea I've been lazy on getting to this... I really have nothing else to do. If I leave home and the nurse agency finds out they stop my care and make me go to the wound clinic... and it's just hard to do anything anyway.  But back to other stuff.... The nurse started with my armpit first. My armpit is looking a lot better... it's amazing the difference between yesterday and today. As for my post earlier about my staples .... I was right that it had to do with them... but it was just 1 staple. The nurse was putting down my xenoform and she always touches the staples, which is fine it never hurt before. She was going around and she touched one and I thought I was going to die. It hurt so much it was crazy. She apologized up and down, and I know she didn't mean to do it so it wasn't a big deal I wasn't mad at her it just hurt a lot. She said it wasn't red or swollen. She said we'd keep a close eye on it though for infection, or it may have just got moved around in my skin and hurt because of that and it may stop in a few days. Hopefully when AI see the surgeon on Tuesday she just takes them out :-) 
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa


For my leg she took all the gauze off and it had not leaked at all from the Tegaderm. Then we decided that putting some water proof tape over the edges where the leaks had been would be the best choice so I didn't have to have gauze all up and down my leg.  My graft is looking amazing, better than yesterday. I'm surprised at the rate that it is healing. I'm also hoping that Tuesday I get to take the Tegaderm off. Also for the picture I tried to get the whole site in it this time. I sort of succeeded, however there is a piece of tape that some nurse stuck on it in the hospital that we can't get off or we will rip the Tegaderm. So it is kind of in the way as well.

From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

Hope you have a good night!!

A quick post

I'm going to do a quick post.... my armpit hurts a ton! I swear all of my staples are being pulled on!  I wish my nurse would come... but she hasn't called to set up a time.... Even though yesterday I told her morning would be better.... but I wont complain because she took really good care of me yesterday and I like her a lot. I guess that's all..

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Day 10

Well all day my dressing has been pulling at my staples more than usual. which was kind of a pain in the butt. I moved around a lot more today too, and tried really hard not to move my arm in the process so hopefully I didn't screw up my graft. My new nurse that will be with me the rest of the time came today and she was great... thank god cause if I got another one like the other day ... I would be really unhappy.  She took my arm dressing off and said she thinks it's looking really good. There was some oozing stuff on the back part, so she cleaned that off and dressed it much better than the other nurses.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

So the middle part is looking a lot better. The area that isn't taking is still about the same size so that's great.
My donor site is looking great ... one day I'll get a picture of how big the donor site actually is... maybe tomorrow when she takes off the patches I'll try to get a full picture. But for now this is what I have.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa


Now for some bad news.... My left armpit still not healing... It's feeling a ton worse, and making it hard to move again. The wonderful red ring is getting worse around it which generally means the infection is getting worse....
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa


So I'm gonna make an appointment with me PCP and have them do another culture to make sure they put me on the right antibiotic for it.  Hopefully it will help it some.... the pain is awful.


That's all I got for the day. Thanks for the emails everyone!

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Day 9

Had an appointment at 9 with the surgeon. She said that the majority of the graft looks nice, and the bleeding didn't damage anymore of it. She said he section where it rolled up will just take a little while longer to heal, but shouldn't be to bad. She also said it will take about 2 months to completely heal and we can get my other one done by the beginning of October. I'm not feeling to well today I think I'm getting sick :-(  I have a picture of my arm, but not one of my leg today, I will post one tomorrow.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

She also told me the lumpiness of it should start to smooth out over time and not to worry about that. I do not have any pain in my leg today, and just the slight pulling on staples that I get every now and then in my armpit is what hurts. Although I'm pretty sure if I stop taking the Neurontin my leg would start that horrible burning pain again.... so I'm going to keep taking it for another few days and try not taking it again, Have a good day!

Replys

Hey everyone!!

I love that I'm getting comments and questions. I would really love to respond to everyone. But I noticed that blogger did not have a reply button this morning... so I searched the internet and found a 3rd party gadget thing that would put a reply button on for me. Only thing is I noticed that you will not receive a notice saying that I replied to you, so unless you check back there you wont see it. If you are fine with that then that is great and I'm fine with it too!  But if you prefer a direct response or if you have a comment you don't want everyone to see please feel free to email me at TracyL.Payne4@gmail.com . My goal is to respond to everyone that leaves something for me. Just want to make sure people don't think I'm ignoring them. Thanks!

Monday, July 19, 2010

Day 8

My nurse didn't come until 7pm today... so kinda late. So I had a new nurse today.... I didn't like her for many reasons. She decided that she was going to start with my donor site first so that's what I'm gonna talk about first. She took off the patch dressings that have to go on the edges of the Tegaderm (plastic wrap stuff that is over my donor site)and put new ones on. It took her forever to put the tape on the new dressings because she couldn't figure out how to take the backing off of the tape. But my donor site is looking awesome. It's turning quite a nice shade of pink. There is still some red and fluids but doing great.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa


Then she moved onto my arm... She took the wrap off my arm, then she took the ABD off (which is a gauze like pad), then she took off the gauze and said "eww". In my head I was wondering why did she just said eww... that's not professional. Then she took off the xenophorm (sp?) and was VERY squeamish about it she didn't want to touch me...believe me you could tell... she was picking at it with one hand and only two fingers. So needles to say when she was trying to pull it off of my staples it hurt more than usual. Not enough to really complain, but still it would have hurt less if she wasn't being like that. So anyway she got it off and it started bleeding a ton. Well it's not supposed to bleed... it's not good. It bled for a good 15 minutes and she was trying to get a hold of the doctor. He told her that because I have an appointment in the morning to just dress it and I should be fine for the night. He also said that if I started to bleed again that I  needed to go into the ER. My armpit looks worse than yesterday.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

There were a few questions on some of the forums that they asked me to answer in here, but I'm not really up to doing it tonight so I will try to tomorrow after I get the news from my doctor. I'm sure I'm forgetting something I want to say.... so I'll either edit after I remember or write it in tomorrows blog.

Have a great night!!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Something I forgot!

So one thing I forgot to add in the last post.... for the first time in six and a half months.....I do not have a fever! Since a month before my first surgery I have had a fever of 98-99.8 once in a while it would reach the 100-101 area for a week or so.  Yes I know the average temp is supposed to be 98.6 but my regular body temperature has always been 96.7... so there is one positive thing for the day   :-)

Day 7

Well I did not feel good at all when I woke up so I didn't take my pain meds. Now my leg is burning.... go figure. My nurse just left a little bit ago. Most of my graft site looks good
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
And the yellow circled part is where my graft is not looking so good and is rolling up, which means that part wont take... obviously.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

The graft could be rolling up due to too much movement in my arm in that direction so I'm going to have to be extra careful .... or more careful than I have been. The nurse said there is a chance that if I get in to the doctor early enough they can unroll it and re stretch it to cover it back up, if that's something my doctor would even do. So I guess we will see how it goes.

On another note... It is hard as heck to find clothes to put on. I mean I can't move my arm so normal T-shirts are out of the question. Tank tops can work if I put it on starting at my feet, but then I have to worry about getting it over my donor site, which sucks too because anything that touches it makes it feel like I have a blow torch on my leg (even while heavily medicated). So I  don't have a whole lot of options.... hopefully the donor site heels really quick so all I have to worry about is finding clothes for my top.


Have a good day

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Wide Excision

On July 12, 2010, I had my second surgery. It was on my right armpit this time. You can see that there was one big open wound and another forming right in front of it. You can also see the purple scarring again along with other bumps that were starting to form. There was also a red ring around my armpit which was from the infection that was going on...  
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

I went in to get prepped for surgery and the surgeon came in to mark what side was supposed to be done.  She marked around where she was going to take the skin from, which was a much bigger section than I thought she was going to take. I went in about ten minutes later and they put me under. I was out of surgery in an hour and a half and was in the recovery room for another hour. After that, I was taken up to my room. I had a wound vac on and could not figure out why my leg hurt so bad, so I moved my gown over and realized that the skin graft that she had taken was massive compared to what I thought it would be. I did not take any pictures while in the hospital but this is what the donor site looks like six days later
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
Now the donor site actually wraps around to the side of my thigh a little bit but it was hard to get all of it in the picture. It looks much better in that picture than it did while I was in the hospital, but it is all I have to show the size of it.

Day One in the hospital -  I slept most of the time outside of them coming in every hour to give me meds, check my vitals, and check my wound vac. I was told to move my arm as little as possible and to keep it slightly out to the side to help the graft take.  My arm did not hurt at all, but the donor site hurt like hell. It felt like someone was taking a blow torch to my leg. No matter what pain meds they gave it did not seem to help the pain of the graft site. My armpit had a black wound vac sponge on the wound with a very tight clear dressing over that to keep things in place. On top of that was a bunch of gauze and such which the surgeon said was just to keep me from freaking out when I woke up, but she left it on anyway. I was told that my arm dressing would stay on until Thursday or Friday when I got discharged. My leg also had a clear tight bandage thing on it and I was told that it would stay on as long as possible.

Day Two in the hospital - Again I slept most of the time and they spent their time checking vitals, giving meds, and checking my wound vac. I saw the surgeon in the morning where she just asked me how I was feeling and made sure my dressings were still in place. She also checked the wound vac and again told me to keep my arm as still as possible and not to move it when I got up for the bathroom and other things. I was still in a ton of pain from the graft site, but the pain meds (Demerol and Toradol through an IV) kind of made me loopy so I didn't really care to much. Looking at my donor site you could see that the bandage was filling with a lot of blood. The theory is that you do not want to change the dressing because once the site starts to heal it will absorb all of the fluids that are left in the bandage so it heals better. Anyways it was really gross cause I could feel it slosh around every time I moved my leg.

Day Three in the hospital -  At two in the morning, I woke up because my leg was wet. I moved around a bit and realized that my bandage had indeed sprung a very big leak. I pushed my call button for the nurse. I stood up and tried to hold a cloth were the leak was but since I am not supposed to move my arm this did not go over so well.  I stood there for about ten minutes and the nurse still had not come in, so I got more blood on the floor than was necessary. She finally came in fifteen minutes after I had pushed the call button and helped me get sort of cleaned up. Then she took the entire dressing off of my leg which hurt more than I can explain.... it's like putting tape on a really bad sunburn and then ripping it off. She then decided she was going to wet a gauze pad and pat it on my donor site which I thought was going to kill me. It hurt so bad I was almost in tears and she kept asking "are you okay, hun?" No I wasn't okay I was almost crying... after that was over she got me a new dressing for it. It felt so nice to not have air hitting the graft site and have her not touching it.  I finally got to go back to sleep around 3:00am and still got woke up every hour or so for all of my checks. They took my IV out in the morning which was nice, but they left the lock in so they could still give meds through the IV if they needed to. I got up and walked around the halls of the hospital with my husband and visited with friends & family. I complained of pain in my leg a lot, but it didn't matter because nothing they did seemed to make the pain better.

Day Four in the hospital - The only thing important that happened today was my surgeon said that the nurse could peel back a little bit of my graft cover and put some lidocaine jelly in it to if that would help. Well it did help, but only the area that it got to which was about the size of a quarter.

Day Five in the hospital- The nurse came in at 6:30am to give me pain meds so I could tolerate the surgeon taking off my dressings at 7:30am.  Well the first thing she did was take off the wound vac which actually did not hurt so that was cool. Then came time for her to take the big bulky gauze off, which didn't hurt either. So I thought it was going very well. Then is was time to take off the plastic wrap looking stuff..... talk about pain! It was very stuck, but she just kept pulling. Then she got to the area around the graft and I think the stuff was stuck to some of the staples that I have. Then she had to take off the black sponge which did not hurt very much at all, thank god cause I couldn't handle it.  The doctor talked to me about the pain in my leg and told me she would give a prescription for Neurontin, she was pretty sure that would take care of the pain. She talked to me about how I could not get my donor site & armpit wet for four weeks, explained again why not to move my arm, and told me I would be having nursing staff come into my home once a day for four weeks to change my dressing(s).

Day Five at home - I took the Neurontin along with my Norco and waited about an hour and a half and my pain went from about an eight to a four on the pain scale - which was amazing.  My graft site had a few small leaks that had to be patched up, but overall things went fairly smooth at home.

Day Six which is today - I am trying to keep on schedule with all my meds otherwise it starts to hurt more, I'm not always right on time. We must have done a fairly decent job of patching all of the small leaks because I had none during the night. The home nurse came today and barely had the stuff to do my dressing change, although in her defense no one told her what special things I needed nor did the hospital give me supplies. I was so afraid it was going to hurt, but it didn't hurt too much.  It only really hurt when part of it got stuck to my staples... go figure. The Neurontin doesn't seem to be helping as much today as it did before but I get to take another pill at 9:00 so we will see. This is what my skin graft looks like as of today
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa

Now it does wrap around a little farther than what the picture shows.  Hopefully I can get a better picture with tomorrow's dressing change. The nurse said it's looking really good and if I keep doing a good job at not moving my arm the whole graft should take.

About Me

My name is Tracy. I am a 22 year old female. I am not going to take the time to explain Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS) to you, because if you are looking at this page it most likely means you were searching for it and already know what it is. However, I have added some links at the bottom of the page to help explain what it is if you don't know. I have had HS for seven years now. It started out as a bump here and there, but it would go away quickly. From there, it has progressively gotten worse. Over the last year and a half, it became more of an issue to deal with as the lumps would rise and become incredibly painful - some of which would break open. Doctors treating me put me on antibiotics to try and help control the lumps... however, none were effective for me. So we scheduled surgery to remove the affected tissue on my left axilla.
In this picture you can see the purple scars where there used to be lumps, also there is a huge lump in the middle of the armpit that you can't see due to the angle of the camera. At this point I had not been able to raise my arm up higher than my shoulder.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa


The next morning, February 19th, 2010, I went in to have the lump excised from my armpit. The surgeon wound up having to go in a lot farther than she though she would because the lump went all the way past my lymph nodes. When I woke up, I was told that I had a drain in my arm that would have to come out in seven to ten days and the stitches would come out in fourteen days. There was also a very massive band-aid that covered my entire armpit. It went up half of the front of my shoulder and matched the height on the other side. After three days, I was allowed to take this off. This was very painful and it tore off some of the skin that was on my shoulder, taking us about a half hour to get the whole thing off. It took another half hour to get most of the adhesive off of my skin. Unfortunately, I did not take pictures of this or of the drain that I had. Post-op Day Five, I started leaking a massive amount of green/yellow fluid from the drain. I called the surgeon and went in to get checked out. She said I had nothing to worry about and that it was just lymph fluid. She decided at that time that she would take out the drain out which was only a couple days early, but what shocked me was she decided to take the stitches out too. I went home and worked on physical therapy exercises on my arm to regain my lost range of motion as I was instructed at this visit. Post-op Day Seven, I noticed that my incision was starting to open.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa


It was only a small hole so I just left it alone for a few more days and next thing I knew it looked like this.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa


So back to the surgeon I went again. They told me that it was fine and it would heal from the inside out and to just leave it open. The wound just kept getting deeper and deeper and more painful. I couldn't wear regular shirts because my shirt would get stuck inside the hole and I would have to rip it out. Then it finally started to look better and close. I thought I was almost done with it until the next day. It was all the way open again. I just didn't get it. I went to the surgeon again and she said it'll close in time and to just let it heal on its own. I would go through this cycle where it would start to close then open up. Some days it would look great, but some day it would look like I just had surgery on it.

It is now July 17th, 2010 and this is how my left armpit looks almost 5 months post-op.
From Hidradenitis Suppurativa