Crikey ...

Have just had my first sight of Adam's abscess wound. And so has Adam himself. Oh my goodness. He insisted on being passed a mirror to have a look at what the nurse, who had come to change his dressing, was doing down there. At first he screamed a bit, and then he insisted his Mum have a look too.

"That's not what they said they were going to do." he cried.

It certainly is not.

Clean it out, use something akin to a cotton swab to manipulate and stretch the wound entrance, and make it roughly double it's original size; about the width of the top of a pencil.

Instead he's had a lump taken out slightly bigger in diameter than a five pence piece, and dome shaped; it resembles a mini bomb crater on the inside of his bottom. From there is a channel (presumably the best part of 3cm deep) that looks about the width of a drinking straw into which they packed layers of gauze whilst he was under general anaesthetic. Layers of gauze that the nurse has just had to extract with a pair of tongs whilst Adam was fully awake and able to feel everything.

I said it wasn't going to be pleasant. Well that was an understatement. It's done now though, and hopefully (if the new dressing remains intact) he won't need to have it done again for another couple of days. The Community Nurse who re-did it today also offered to come out on Sunday, and Adam's happy with that plan. Whilst I'm on the subject; when it looked like Adam would be on IV antibiotics over Christmas, another member of the team offered to drive to our house on Christmas morning to administer them. We really are very thankful Adam has such a fantastic team of Community Nurses to look after him!