Just last night Karen told me quite defeatedly that it didn't seem like anything was improving. Her digestion is returning to normal, but her pain level was about the same. If anything, the pain had gone up some. The wound keeps opening up despite being being restitched and reglued. And reglued, and reglued. Today we had our two week follow up appointment with the surgeon. He says the infection is what's causing the wound to repeatedly open, and said the team felt that no amount of stitching or gluing would keep the wound closed at this point. And if it won't close, it won't heal. The antibiotic irrigation can only do so much with an open wound, and new bacteria will continue to enter from the skin; even healthy skin is full of bacteria.
The solution seems to be another surgery to remove the mesh. Since the area around the mesh is also contaminated, they can't just replace the mesh with a new one. This would mean there'd be one surgery to remove the mesh, and a different surgery, after everything has healed, to place a new mesh. Then you have to hope the new one doesn't get infected. Since Karen already has so much scar tissue inside her, and due to other cancer related issues, they are trying to avoid surgery as much as possible, and will simply remove the mesh without plans to place a new one. As I mentioned before, the muscle that was removed with the cancer will never return. This means there will essentially be nothing between her intestines and her skin. After eating, her intestines could literally bulge out of her abdomen. This doesn't seem to be too much of a concern since the double mesh placement from before already looks like a bulge. It also means hernias will be a serious concern, and it's possible she will have to be put on activity restrictions for the rest of her life. The upside to all of the scar tissue building up around her intestines is that it may help hold everything in place. There are too many factors to know how much of a concern it will be. He said they will do an evaluation after the surgery to decide about activity restrictions.
The surgery has a tentative date of April 1st. If only it were an April Fools' joke. Karen feels although it's not the expected result, this extra time will give the wound another chance heal and close up on it's own. Oh, and the expected recovery time? 2 to 3 days.
