wound vac

anybody have experience with a wound vac?  like how fast the wound finally heals once you start one??  had surgery the end of sept. wound started leaking a lot the next week. surgeon reopened the wound.  visiting nurse had been coming to the house daily to pack the wound, still hadn't healed.  second hole opened on its own in the incision last week.  dr decided to cut the two holes into one big hole and voila i get a wound vac out of the deal. yay! :(

i'm just really tired and fed up right now.  i need this to heal ASAP!!!

It really depends on how deep your wound is.  I did not use a wound vac (long story) and my very large open wound (from a necrotic tummy tuck incision) took over 5 months to fully heal.  One of my dear friends also had a problem with her tummy tuck incision (hers was much smaller in diameter, but almost as deep) but she had a wound vac.  It still took hers over 3 months to fully heal. 

The tissue heals from the inside up, so the deeper the wound, the longer it takes.  Even once the tissue builds back up to the level of the rest of the area, it can take a couple of weeks for the skin to grow back (and it may be very fragile -- easily tearing open again -- for a couple of weeks more after that).

Lora

thanks so much for your help.
i believe it's about 7 cm deep.  they told me about 2 weeks.  but i'm really chomping at the bit.  this has been going on for sooo long now :(

That's really deep... 7 cm is nearly three inches!  If it is that deep, it will probably take much longer than 2 weeks to heal up... although -- now that I think about it -- I do not know how the fat factors into healing (since much of the depth you have is probably fat rather than tissue, and the fat does not need to "rebuild").  Mine was around 6cm deep (you could see the muscle fascia!), but I had lost my excess weight already so all of that depth was tissue that had to re-grow.

Lora

 I have a lot of experience with wound vacs and healing.  7cm is pretty deep.  Healing will be poor if you are not getting enough protein in, so be sure you have lots of fluid, lots of protein.  The tissue will look like a bright red tongue if everything is going good.  WLS patients tend to have much slower healing but being that you are only two to three months out you may not be out of reserves quite yet.  Hope you heal fast!!!

thanks so much!

I have a friend that just had a wound vac removed from a different surgery and it stayed in for 9 weeks.  She had a 5cm hole to heal closed.  I hope you're able to heal quickly!  I know they're not comfortable.