One milestone down and one coming up. The home care nurse decided that my incision no longer needs packing. Several weeks ago, the surgeon reopened part of it as it was infected and not draining properly. To keep it from healing too quickly (I haven’t figured out why this is a bad thing, personally), she packed the reopening so it would wick the yucky stuff out of the infected pocket and properly drain.
However, the pocket has slowly been healing and there’s been almost no drainage at all. There’s a wee bit on the top, where it mostly drained on the bottom, but that’s not much more than a dribble. No, I’m not posting pictures. The nurses think it’s because I’m becoming more active and say this is good. However, my nurse this morning actually couldn’t get any packing in it at all, even after cutting it in half. Therefore, she said, “That’s it. No packing for you,” albeit without the Seinfeld-ish accent. In short, the infection appears to have run its course and my incision is healing. It has been five weeks since the last surgery and six weeks is the magic cutoff point for worrying about an instant incisional hernia (not a good thing, by the way).
Milestone #2 is coming on Tuesday. I’m going to start back to work for the first time since the beginning of June. I’m looking forward to it. It’ll only be part time, especially at the beginning.
But, to get back to work, I do have to make two huge adaptations. First, I have to start to getting into a sleeping rythym that will allow me to get up in time. My hours are based on chaos theory at the moment so I have to shift myself to a more linear paradigm. That will be a bit difficult, but isn’t the biggest problem. In order to go back to work in October, I have to readapt to wearing socks again. That one, I’m not looking forward to…
Doug Rutherford 
Are socks a work requirement? Really?
If nothing else, they’ll keep my feet warm. Since I’m not going to do much other than lock myself in my office, I may be able to sneak in wearing my jammies though.