Hi there,
Yes, please keep in touch. You can find me at: --- Message edited by CancerCompass staff: for personal protection, email address removed. Please review CancerCompass Member Guidelines at
http://www.cancercompass.com/common/guidelines.html ----. I went to the emergency room the morning the wound "popped" but the surgeon said that he had hoped he could clean it there, but found once he saw me that he really needed to go ahead and admit me so he could have full access to an operating room. My wound was pretty large, so I think that's what he was thinking. According to the specialist, the radiation basically "cooked" the infection and caused the abscess. For the week between my abscess surgery and when the VAC arrived, they were packing my wound twice a day. It took an entire roll of 4-inch wide gauze to fill my wound each time. It was actually kind of funny when we would pull it out to clean the wound and re-pack. It just kept coming and coming as we pulled. My rad onc guy was amazed the day I was in his office for a re-check (after the abscess had happened), and the surgical nurse wasn't there yet to do the wound un-pack/re-pack. I just went ahead and started pulling out all the gauze. He stood there and just stared as I kept pulling out thing very long piece of fabric. The wound was up high on the right--it was kind of like having a very strange pocket right there attached to my body. I survived a lot of green salve that was very expensive as wound care progressed, plus they had to keep using a little knife to scrape away icky stuff that kept growing inside the wound between changes.....ouch! Hang in there....you'll be just fine!