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