I wonder if things could go any worse if we actively tried?
So despite going back to see the cardiologist on Monday afternoon, concerned about there possibly being still some sort of infection, and being told there wasn't, on Thursday morning, the top part of the incision was looking swollen.
It looked even more so by the evening when I got home from work, and Sarah emailed a photo to the cardiologist, and he agreed it didn't look too crash hot, so he phoned a prescription for another, longer course of antibiotics through to the pharmacy, but too late to get filled last night.
By bedtime it was looking even more ready to blow, and sure enough, around 1am (it's always 1am) it erupted everywhere. Fortunately (for me), I missed all the gory details, but I think there was a fair bit of fluid built up in there.
So we went back to the clinic this morning, and they decided that they needed to open up part of the incision to let it drain and heal properly.
They took another swab to run another culture, and then got a physician's assistant to take to her with a scalpel. I've seen my poor wife go through too many painful things in the last six months. Today's was no better. Most of the problem was the local anaesthetic injections, but watching them open up the incision again wasn't much fun either. No one should have to go through as much shit in a short time as what Sarah has had to. It's just not fair.
She now has a gaping hole in her chest with some gauze packed in it, which has to be changed twice a day (by lucky old me). The idea is to let it heal from the bottom up, rather than the top down, as it seems an abscess had formed in the wound, and that was were all the trouble was. So by leaving it all open, it can drain properly, and heal from the bottom up. $DEITY only knows what sort of mess it's going to make of the incision area, but we can deal with that later. They reckon it'll take another 4-6 weeks to heal.
I'm really hoping now that with it draining, and another course of antibiotics, Sarah will be in much less pain.
I just did the evening gauze change. Fun. The opening in the incision is longer than I remembered them making this morning. It's about an inch long, and a centimetre deep, and there's a small hole in the bottom that presumably leads to the "interior". It's not as bad looking as I thought it might be. Packing the gauze in didn't seem to hurt Sarah too much, which is just as well.
This really is the pits. I really hope this is the end of this, and the infection goes away for good, and the incision heals quickly. In terms of recovery, this is a pretty major setback in my opinion. From now on, we won't be relying on the cardiologist for surgical opinions, we'll be insisting a member of the surgical team checks Sarah out.