Week 5

Hello again and welcome to week 5 of my blog!

This week I continued doing my rounds. I hope to start my retrospective analysis when I get back in to clinic in 2 weeks. This week was interesting, however, because I'm finally able to see progress in the healing of people's wounds. Chronic wounds are rather slow to heal, so it takes a few weeks to be able to see them heal. While some patients' wounds progressed in a positive way, others were not so lucky.

Many of the patients were discharged this week because they kept their feet elevated and wore their compression socks. The patient who had the old pace maker, which I talked about in another one of my blogs, has improved a lot. Although his wound still has a rather large tunnel leading towards his belly button, the opening is smaller and he was able to get his stitches taken out this week.  Some of the other patients who had skin substitutes have also improved. One patient came in with a rather large ulcer on her leg, and Dr. Stein put dermapure, a donated skin collagen, to cover the wound:

She came back in to clinic this week and her wound was close to being completely closed!  Some patients, however was not as lucky.  Another patient had a wound near his ankle, and the doctor put dermapure on his wound. However, dermapure does not always take: the skin substitute did not properly integrate into the wound and became incredibly infected.

I also become rather familiar with the different drugs related to wound care.  The doctors frequently prescribe genomycin, bactroban, lydocaine, iodosorbe, sylvadine, etc. However, the most frequent prescription continues to be elevation and compression.

Lots of the patients have actually know my name now, and it's great to walk into their rooms and be able to connect with the patient, which is one of the best parts about being a doctor, in my opinion.

I won't have a post next week, because I will be taking my spring break then, but stay tuned in 2 weeks for my next post!