Wound Drain

I keep forgetting to write about the wound drain that I had in. They put in a small drain into the back of my head to drain the blood and any other fluid that collected in my wound. It looked something like this. The end of the tubing was stitched into my incision.













This drain helped to keep the swelling down and relieve the pressure that built up immediately after surgery.  They emptied the drain the first night and 90 cc of fluid came out. This is equivalent to about 6 tablespoons. In order to take it out I had to be draining less than 60 cc of fluid over 8 hours. The next morning (Friday), once I got into a regular room the physician assistant came in and checked the drain. I had only drained 30 cc more (about 2 tablespoons) of fluid. This meant we could take the drain out! It was slightly painful for her to take out because they had stitched it into my incision to hold it in place. It took some time to get those couple stitches out, and I could feel them digging around with the scissors to get them out. Once those stubborn little stitches came out they just pulled the tubing out. This part was not painful, it was just a lot of pressure when she pulled on the tubing. We just had to put gauze on the incision for a little while to stop the bleeding and you can't even tell where it went in anymore.

Unless I think of something else I forgot I will try to update again over the next couple of days, but I make no guarantees as we will be traveling back home to Chicagoland. Happy holidays all!