Wound Healing

Bill, the nurse, took my blood pressure and temperature. He blotted my scars with saline, slathered Lidocaine gel onto two gauze pads, and secured the pads over my wounds. I was used to the routine; I had been going to the Wound Healing Center three times a week since early February. As he worked he said, “Have you had any pain?”

“None in the neck,” I said, but the arm hurt a bit.” He nodded his head in affirmation. He made notes in my chart, then set up the required tools on a metal tray.

“The doctor’s moving fast today,” he said, “It won’t be long.” Two weeks ago the doctor did the last of four minor surgeries. Now he was going to remove the stitches.

There was a quick knock on the door. The doctor strode in with a nurse following behind. The nurse removed the gauze on the back of my neck and the doctor efficiently pealed off the steri-strips. It didn’t hurt, yet when I felt his touch on my skin, I instantly remembered how the neck had been bruised and sore for a week. I hadn’t been able to sleep comfortably or turn my head from one side to the other without it throbbing. How could I have forgotten so quickly? I wasn’t attempting to be brave when the nurse asked if I had experienced any pain; I had sincerely forgotten.

“Looks great, all healed,” he announced before moving confidently to the arm. I felt a pinch as each stitch was plucked out. Vividly I remembered how it felt as my skin was sewn together like fabric. There was no discomfort until the next day when each time I shifted the left shoulder; it felt as if my skin was being ripped. After ten days, I had almost called him to check if this amount of discomfort was to be expected.

My brain forgets pain almost instantaneously once it has ceased, nevertheless my body will help me to remember. These new scars will fade like the others on my skin. I have a scar on each of my wrists. Each is a reminder of a cut made by a doctor when he could not insert a needle into a vein. I can hardly see them myself now that they have been a part of me for about 60 years. For years when I touch the slanting one on my left wrist, I could hear the doctor nervously whistling as he used the scalpel. I can sense his anxiety and feel my mistrust.

I know that my skin will help me remember the places it was cut, the void that was created, the sensation of being sutured, and the postsurgical soreness. From the doctor’s perspective it was “all healed.” However, my body will remind me that there is more healing to be done.

The Devil I Know

Often I have found myself explaining to people who ask, “So, if you have no fibrinogen, do you bruise easier?” What I want to reply is, “No, I have very thick skin.” Of course I would be thinking figuratively, not literally. I’ve answered so many of these questions in my lifetime I have adopted a defense system that shields me from blood phobias.
The questions were scary for me when I was a child and someone would ask, “Can you bleed to death from a cut?” The questions were embarrassing when I was an adolescent, “How do you stop bleeding from your monthly periods?” As a young adult the questions seemed ridiculous, “What happens when you shave your legs?”

Most people fumble about trying to phrase the question they really want to ask, “Will you start to bleed in front of me and collapse in a pool of blood?” Eventually, I grew weary of the questions.

I learned a skill set and developed a level of confidence. More than that, being a “bleeder” became part of my identity. It did not define me, but I knew how to handle it. Then came the game changer in the form of an email message from a friend in California. She had been born with a fibrinogen deficiency and had reached out internationally online to find others who also had low levels or no fibrinogen.

A small group of us had been exchanging information on an email list for several years when she wrote saying that she was now having problems with thrombosis. At first there was disbelief, It gave me the heebie-jeebies when she reported that they were giving her clotting factor and anticoagulant medications at the same time. Then in 1997 a young woman in Switzerland sent a message that she had several embolisms in both of her lungs. When I was hospitalized not long after that for an internal bleed in my lower intestine, my hematologist laughed when I told him that an embolism was my biggest concern. It was no laughing matter to me though. Since then one of the members of our group has died from complications of thrombosis and one has recently reported that she lost the use of her right hand and some vision when clots formed in the arteries of her arm and neck.

Having long passed the fear of bleeding I now found myself afraid of the opposite. The irony is that I am starting all over with the pattern of vulnerability, misunderstanding, and angst. It felt like it is was new devil sticking its tongue out at me. It’s not, though, its just that same old devil testing me. It smiles and whispers in my ear. “You think you are in control, but you aren’t.”