https://www.facebook.com/IZadaptive/videos/281976846587086
I’m warning you now…this is going to get graphic!
Have you ever had a hole in your body?! I’m not talking about a piercing or a cut…I’m talking about a gaping hole that you can insert 1, 2, 3 fingers or sometimes even a hand in?! Well this is what I experienced the year of 2010-June 2011 and still to this day I battle my skin on an everyday basis.
Basically I had a pressure sore! More commonly known as a bedsore. Generally only old people in the hospital or nursing homes get these sore from not being turned enough while lying down in bed. Essentially that is what a pressure sore is, the breaking down of skin, tissue and muscle from the inside out. As an example put your elbow on a hard surface and leave it there. You eventually will feel the discomfort and move. Unfortunately for a lot of people that develop skin issues such as bedsores and pressure sores, they often cannot feel or move themselves to alleviate the pressure. That’s when the bone literally starts to burrow a tunnel from the inside of your body out. You can get pressure sores in a lot of places on your body but mainly it’s where contact is made with some sort of bony prominent area.
For people in wheelchairs, pressure sores are mainly found on the butt and feet! The butt because you’re always sitting on it and feet because they are always down or up resting on something so the heel is a spot where a lot of quadriplegics have issues. Whereas the paraplegics generally have pressure sore on their butts and that is where mine was! My right butt cheek that is pretty well nonexistent now due to the pressure sore eating away all of my tissue and muscle I had left.
So how did this happen?! I was in the best spinal cord hospital in Canada and had a team of therapists when I left!!!! Well what can I say and unfortunately people fall through the cracks. Heat, Pressure and Friction are the 3 main things that will cause skin break down for me. This was explained to me when I was in and left the hospital but as a 22 year old male, I just wanted to get back to life. I was out with my friends, going to the mall and driving my ‘87 5.0L Mustang that I had just bought off a customer at the shop. I didn’t realize that all of my activity would contribute to a pressure sore. I thought you just kind of got them from not moving around enough. I moved around too much and with my cushion situation not being the best there were times when I would bottom out and my bony butt would be sitting on a very hard surface.
On top of that I wear a condom catheter and leg bag 24/7. Back then I didn’t…I left the hospital on a schedule of peeing every 3.5 – 4 hrs and there were inevitably lots of times where I just pissed my pants because I simply didn’t know it was coming! In case you didn’t know sitting in pee is absolutely horrible for your skin! The worst part was that there were times when I didn’t even know I had wet pants. SMH Soooo! Between my very active lifestyle, wet pants and lack of good people to talk to when I lost my therapy team, the pressure sore started. At first it was just a red spot. Then a red spot with a tiny hole on the top. Then that tiny hole started to spread. I would go to the doctor and they would say that it’s like an iceberg and it was worse underneath. The doctors and nurses said that I needed to lie down the majority of the day and I was like yea, no screw that. I continued life and the pressure sore just got worse.
It got to a point where I had nurses coming in up to 2 times a day to change my dressings. Yes the pressure sore got so bad that I had to have nurses coming in to help me manage this hole in my leg/butt. There is this stuff they called “packing ribbon.” The nurse would clean my wound and then take this roll of 0.5cm-1.5cm ribbon tape or gauze like tape and pack it into my wound. I would lie on my stomach and then she would use a big q-tip guiding the tape into my wound to fill up the 1 main hole and 3 other river-like channels that had opened up off of the main pressure sore hole. There were times when up to 1 meter of packing ribbon was shoved into my wound.
The worst part of all of this was not the nurses, it was not being able to sit up or go out, it was the smell…. Have you ever smelled rotting skin?! Have you ever smelled your own rotting skin and tissue?! Well I have and it’s absolutely disgusting. The nurses had to come everyday and help me with the bandages because the wound would literally leak disgusting bodily fluids that stunk and prevented the wound from healing.
Next, comes the “VAC!” Yes the “VAC” Can you guess what the “VAC” does?! Well lemme break it down for you…they tape a hose to your butt cheek and this machine sucks out all of the muscle, tissue and nasty juices that your body is now producing as it’s essentially decomposing while you’re still alive. When I say that the pressure sore was worse than being paralyzed, I’m not joking! I had no appetite, I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything. I was stuck on my side and my stomach for almost an entire year.
The breaking point came when I kept ending up in the hospital and the doctors and nurses told me that I was going to die. They said to me, “ do you know who Christopher Reeves is?” I said Superman! As people referred to me as superman early on in the injury and then they were like “yea he died from a pressure sore infection like the one you have!” I could not believe this. The man had all the money in the world and still died from a pressure sore infection because he just didn’t want to pay attention.
I have a friend that has a saying that rings true in almost every aspect of life. “If you fail to pay attention, you pay with pain!” Truer words were never spoken. When they told me this, I became scared to tell you the truth. I had worked so hard to get over becoming paralyzed to be brought right back down by a pressure sore and the possibility of dying made everything super real. At that point I started taking my antibiotics religiously. In May of 2011 I was admitted into St.Michael’s hospital downtown for a couple days prior to my surgery.
As the good Lord would have it, I was 5 doors down from one of my best buddies Mike Martin. I grew up with Mike at Valley Farm and then in his house where the door was never locked and I often found myself multiple times a week not only through elementary school but the beginning of highschool as well. Mike was very sick after a certain Durham region hospital messed up his surgery, inevitably killing him.He was one of my brothers and his death ruined several peoples lives after that. I was just super happy that I got to spend those last times together with him even if we were both in the hospital fighting for our lives.
A few days later I was under the knife and Mike was going home. When the plastic surgeon went in, he essentially cleared out all of the dead tissue and muscle to promote healthy healing. He also shaved down the bone that gave me the pressure sore as I have no skin left there now. If the bone was left as it was, there is no doubt in my mind that it would have created another pressure sore within weeks. If you sit on your hands and push up you will feel exactly what I’m talking about and they are called your ischiums. So I now have no right butt cheek and a massive scar that goes from the middle of the butt cheek down my hamstring. The entire incision is about 8 inchs long.
After my surgery I was immediately shipped back off to Lyndhurst where I did my initial stint in rehab…to say that I was less than impressed is a massive understatement. I was so angry! To top it all off, they took my wheelchair home and I could not move or get out of my bed on my own for weeks. In comes the BANANA CART… this thing was my new wheelchair while at Lyndhurst. It was probably the most embarrassing mode of transportation I’ve ever used. I’m pretty sure I’ve picked up a little kids pink bike one time before and rode it home because I was tired of walking. Lol This was far worse!
It was a stretcher with 2 big wheels on the front and 2 small castors on the back. This was my new wheelchair and my means of getting around the facility. It was like I was a tractor trailer and all the other wheelchairs were smart cars smh I had to do everything on my stomach…eat, sleep, pee and yes number 2. You try to figure that out…again being humbled beyond belief just lit a fire underneath me even more, to get back to life and tear a hole in this world. I spent just over 1 month on this damn banana cart before being allowed to sit back up in my chair. 15mins in the morning and then 15 in the afternoon. Everyday I was able to sit up a little bit longer. Now, nine years later and although my skin is still sensitive depending on what I’m sitting on, I’m just happy to be alive and making a meaningful impact in people’s lives.
These gamechanger jeans are probably one of the best things I have encountered for people in chairs since being in the chair. I’ve definitely had clothes whether its jeans or track pants create skin issues for me. When Izzy came out with IZ Adaptive it changed the world. Now with the game changers there is no going back and people with disabilities will be able to be comfortable, sexy and live their best lives yet. They are light and breathe really well. They are very stylish and my favourite part about the pants is that you don’t have to worry about looking happy in the front or showing off my hairy butt at the back! Since trialing the gamechangers a couple of months ago my skin health has been the best since walking. I’m slowly getting rid of every other jean in my closet to replace them with my #gamechanger pants from Iz Adaptive.
Recent Comments