Last night, while Karen was sleeping, she rolled over onto her side and her incision opened up in two places. Lots of puss, fluid, and blood came out. There wasn't any pain associated with the mess, and the openings themselves weren't pulling apart like they had done previously, but we were still alarmed. It had opened right along the incision in two places. One was just less than a centimeter long and the other about 2 centimeters. We called Mayo first thing in the morning and once again they got us in the same day.
At first there was talk of opening the incision back up to make sure it was entirely drained, but in the end they decided to just drain what they could, stitch it shut, and send us home with an antibiotic (Augmentin). Despite two syringes of lidocaine, Karen still had an incredibly tough time with the pain as they put the stitches in. She was shaking (convulsing?) at one point, even to the points of getting cramps in her arms. We figured they'd probably want to do something, and had thought about applying the lidocaine patches we had previously had so much luck with, but didn't, which turned out to be a big mistake. Karen took some oxycodone directly after the stitching and we sat for about 20 to 30 minutes before heading out. We have a follow up in a week.
On the bright side. Karen has been awake a lot more since dropping down to lower doses of the pain patches. She's awake at least as much now as she was back at the beginning of the year, maybe even more so, which is quite encouraging.
