Mr. Exu Date, Meet De-Bride

I'm doing okay today. Well, I got up in a bad mood because I couldn't get to sleep until midnight. And, I have to get up at 6:30am. I know how important sleep is and it tends to elude me recently.

But even though I thought I'd be exhausted today, I found I had more energy than expected.

Remember Mr. Exu Date (weeping wound)? Well, Exu is crying up a storm lately. My clothes and my bed linens don't like that, but it is what it is. It seems, though, that Exu has decided to run off and get married to De-Bride.

Exu and I went to the surgeon today, who proceeded to introduce Exu to "de-bridement". "Debridement" means to remove dead or infected tissue from a wound to help in its healing.

My wound care nurse started this process yesterday but she didn't want to go too far or too deep - that's the surgeon's job. So, the surgeon today took what he could, until he encountered pink tissue. He said he went about three inches deep . . . I don't want to know any more!

The other interesting thing that both he and I noticed is that some of the satellite lesions around the main lesion have grown softer after the Abraxane treatment, which may indicate that the cancer in there is dying. He also felt that there was more dead tissue in the wound, maybe due to the Abraxane. So, there may be a couple of signs that Abraxane is doing what it needs to do, which is kill the cancer. I'm monitoring the other swollen nodes - the ones near the collar bone seem the same size, but the node in the groin - and the lymphedema - seemed better. If I can notice these outward signs that it's working, I'll willingly go to the treatments.

It may be weeks or even months before the wound heals. It's going to be a process of allowing the tissue to die, debriding it, etc. He doesn't want to do a surgery because the area is way too big, if you count the satellite lesions. However, they will do a larger surgery if I get a pretty bad infection. If they did do surgery now, I'd need a skin graft and maybe even a Lat flap (where they take tissue from around my shoulder). But for now, I think the hope is that we continue with Abraxane, which will kill the cancer, the tissue will die, they remove the dead tissue when it shows up and keep the wound clean, and wait for the whole area to heal itself as the cancer goes away.

Speaking of Exu, he just wept through the dressing. Sigh. Off to change it. Have a great night and a good week-end.

P.S. I just changed the dressing. Mount Herminator has a couple of craters. A good thing . . .