Post Surgery

Some asked, why did you put up all those pain and suffering in a blog?

Others said, my so-called sufferings pale in comparison to others, like kidney infection, lung diseases etc.

First of all, I know I may have over-dramatized the pain, but so far, I had countless sprains, a mis-located thumb, and 6-ulcers in the throat, which all provided me with pain that I would never wish happened to others.

I used to go through entire sessions of my dad's uncle's "tui na" (urut or massage) without even a shout, and the most serious time was when my ankle was bruised like a pig's leg.

However, the current illness is the most unbearable of the lot.

I will describe more of it later.

For now, my intention of creating this blog is to let others, whom have experienced the same illness, to know what happened, is it similar to their pain, and to create a reference for me, in case I need some notes on this problem later on (who knows).

When I went back my hometown during Chinese New Year, a friend of mine from high school told me that he also had fistulae too, before he went to London for work, so we are like, "fistulae-mate". :

Anyway, for fistulae, the surgery wound cannot be sewn back, and have to be left open. This is so that the pus would not accumulate inside, and can go out through the wound.

I have read from wikipedia that there are other treatment options for fistulae and I will discuss this with Dr. Ravi later. The anal fistula plug looks like an attractive treatment.

"Anal Fistula Plug is a recently developed method known as AFP. This treatment requires placement and fixing of a plug in the anal fistula by a special technique. The plug is made of highly sophisticated absorbent material; it provides a scaffold over which body’s collagen gets deposited and closes the fistula. Comparative studies have shown this method to be very effective. One advantage of this method is that it involves no cutting, so there is no post operative wound and pain. AFP plugs can sometimes be inserted under local anesthesia. This method can be used successfully to treat high fistula without colostomy. It does not carry any risk of bowel incontinence. As opposed to the staged operations, which may require multiple hospitalizations, AFP requires hospitalization for only about 24 hours. The success rate of AFP is better than the other procedures. AFP was approved for clinical use by the FDA in May 2005 and hundreds of procedures have been done since then. "

Now, back to yesterday, when I first went back for dressing. I need to do dressings on the wound to clean the wound up.

I expected it to be painful, but since the last two days were largely painless, I don't think it will be as painful as the previous times.

Boy, am I wrong.

When the nurse first cleaned my wound with EUSOL, I let off a small scream. The dressing was terrible.

But that is not all, the nurse then had to insert a small gauze into my wound, so that it would soak up the blood and the pus. I didn't really see how the gauze is inserted, since I haven't attained the master level of yoga.

I think the most painful part is actually the tweezers, because she had to use a tweezer to push the gauze in, and the tip of tweezers will definitely touch the wound.