New phase of Pain Sessions – The Vac Machine

Dr. Shahid had already mentioned the working of the Vac Machine. Just as its name, it’s a machine that vacuums all the wound fluid out. This helps with the granulation of the wound. In layman’s terms it means it helps in the production of new tissues around the wound, thus making healing faster. However, the process of installing the Vac would be a bit painful. As the wound is still raw because skin debridement was done the previous day. All the dead, infected skins and tissues were removed. So it’s like opening up a fresh wound. Dr. Shahid said they’d give me a shot for the pain but it’s not going to kill the pain, only reduce it. 😬

It would be an OP procedure but would be done in the room itself. Like the dressing change. The only difference is once they open it up they’d close it up with the Vac attached.

Setting up the Vac

By noon I was given a shot to reduce the pain. Anoop the Vac technician had come. Anoop would be the person actually setting up the Vac. Dr Askhar and Dr Harin soon came with nurses to assist them. The procedure was they’d stick a special foam, over the wound It looked like a regular sponge, but I guess it had a special material composition that was wound-friendly. The foam would be glued on using something called a ‘ tinger ‘, a kinda an adhesive. The foam would then be wrapped up in cellophane-type sticky tape to ensure there is no air leak. A suction head was connected to a tube, that went into a Canister of the Vac Machine. The machine would apply controlled suction pressure. The exudate would then get sucked by the suction head and pass through the tube into the Canister. At that moment this was the explanation that I was given by Anoop on how the whole thing worked.

Just as in any other pain sessions I still had my glasses off 😊. Dr. Shahid had arrived in time to support my thighs and things started to roll. The dressing was opened, I think they did an initial cleaning of the wound, it was like any other pain session, we joked about the fact that I had not been to Dubai physically and yet the masked man send me there with anesthesia.

Akhtar was also assisting in between. He was also helping the doctors attend to their mobiles as their hands were tied up. I am glad that Akhtar had a medical background, he didn’t freak out seeing all the blood and ooze. ( fresh debride wound meant fresh blood guys ) While Anoop did his magic, we talked about school days and life in the middle east. Dr Shahid kept on giving me briefs on what was happening in between. Finally, I could feel the cellophane tape being wrapped around and then I heard the sound of the Vac for the 1st time.

It was more than an hour when they finally started to gift wrap my leg ( My way of saying -bandaging up the leg in white gauze and pads ! ) 😊 What a session! Everyone really put in a lot of work. Anoop said that he didn’t expect so much when Dr. Shahid had asked him to come. Dr.Harin and Dr. Shahid had OP so they had to leave. Dr. Askhar and Anoop got the gift warping done.

Managing the pain

There was a stingy pain when they applied the tinger, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I guess when Dr Shahid mentioned that it will hurt a bit, I kinda imagined it to be 10 times so when the time came, it didn’t hurt as much. Or the safer bet would be the shot to reduce the pain they had given before the procedure was doing its job!! 😊 Either way, it worked! So now I had a new member to add to the group for weeks to come.

Nice Looking Wound!

Later Dr Owais came to visit me, and just so happened that Dr Shahid was also there on his rounds. They both looked at the wound pics after the debridement that Dr Shahid had on his phone. Dr Owais excitedly “Masha ALLAH !!, such a nice looking wound !!” “It looks so much better. I was really tempted to take a look at it myself with all the excitement Dr Owais was showing 😊. I mean come on! How could a wound look nice !!!?? I could understand the compliment. Definitely, Dr Harin and the others had done a very good job, but I couldn’t relate to a wound looking nice!! I guess I’d have to be a doctor or be someone from a medical background or something to appreciate a ‘ Nice looking wound!!’ 😂 Though they both were ready to show me the images and pointed the phone toward me. As many of my friends and family know that I love documenting events and things in sequence with images. This time I did not want to. 😊I smiled and said “I’ll pass, thank you very much! 😊