Boys and their scrapes

Yesterday I was helping Carl James with some of his medical needs. As I was helping him I happened to look down at his leg and I saw this fresh oozing wound. My stomach turned. It's on his leg that he doesn't feel very well (his left) and doesn't have much circulation in. Because of the lack of sensation and circulation, his body has a very difficult time healing wounds on that leg and especially foot. We have had a problem with sores on his left foot not healing and causing us to eventually have to amputate his left pinky toe (after 4 years of bandaging and babying it) so seeing a fresh sore on his leg isn't a "no big deal" type of thing. The wheels in my head started to turn "Is it from his braces? Maybe it's from his shoes that he wears without braces. What are we going to do? How can I protect it? Will bandages make it better or will it make it rub worse? Why is it wet and oozing? How bad is this gonna get? Should I call wound care? I hate that this happens to him so easily. Why does he have to have this trial? He can't go without shoes. 

That will cause the underside of his toe to rip open again and we will be that much closer to amputating another toe. But he can't wear shoes rubbing that thing! Ahh!"

 



In the pictures it doesn't quite show the redness or the wet oozing but you get an idea

All of this went through my head in a matter of seconds. My heart started racing. The guilt was setting in of not checking his skin more regularly like the doctors had told me to do. Then my thoughts were interrupted with him saying "It's probably from me sliding down the stairs on my knees without shoes." My mind was brought back to all of the times I had heard the "thud, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, thud" down the stairs the past few days. All of my thoughts and my mood immediately changed. I thought "Oh so this sore is from my son who is disabled being an active and healthy boy?!" Suddenly I felt excitement, joy and I admit a little bit of pride. We still had the matter to deal with of how to tackle this new sore but I was so happy to hear that it wasn't from bracing or shoe issues. It wasn't from something that festered over weeks without me noticing. It was from my son being a boy!

While I am concerned about the overall outcome of this new sore, I am grateful that my son can move around and explore and still enjoy some boy like activities! One thing he has taught me though is that pain is a good thing! Had he had normal sensation he would have stopped sliding down the stairs before it got to this point. Since then I have banaged the toe and used both medihoney and complete tissue and bone on it and the redness has gone down, and shrunk in diameter. My friend who is a nurse gave me the genius idea of drawing around the edges of the red to see if it goes outside the lines in the morning. Luckily it shrunk!

This is a picture after I put the medihoney on it.

I guess time will tell how the wound turns out but so far I am pretty pleased with the progress.