Episode 17: I Am Not A Nurse!

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I am not a nurse!  

I know nothing about wound care. I can’t stand even the sound of someone getting ready to throw up. I don’t have the stomach for anything coming out of a body in ways it normally shouldn’t!

I am not a nurse. But yet I was sent home with a man that had two drains coming out of him that I was in charge of!!! 

What the heck?  Let’s give ourselves a round of applause for having to do things as caregivers that we never thought we’d ever have to do.

 I was jus thrown right into things. Right before we left the hospital a nurse came in to teach me how to strip a drain. I’d seen them do it the whole time we were in the hospital. We had a lot of discussions about drains but they never mentioned I might have to take care of them when we got home!

If you don’t know what a drain is, it’s a plastic tube that winds through the place you had surgery where there is a build up of fluid that needs to be removed. When you have your thyroid and lymph nodes removed all at the same time there is a build up of blood, lymph and pus that forms because of the removal of so many things in one area. I feel it also lets you see what is happening in real time because all of those bodily fluids look different when they come out to the drain and just like a cup of gravy that has sat around for too long, it separates. 

Anyway, they send me home with a person that had drains in him that I now had to strip.  

I think this is important to know if you will be caring for someone who will come home with a drain. Maybe even ask the doctor when you have that meeting right before surgery. Just so you can have an understanding of what you will be expected to do. Because, let me tell you, when they told me I’d have to take care of them and then taught me what to do it was really as if they were teaching me how to crack an egg. Easy, not disgusting at all and quick. Of course as a nurse I’m sure that was the least of the disgusting things they come across in their job . But  let’s come back to the fact that I am not a nurse!!!

So I stripped the drains, It isn’t that it’s hard to physically do. It was just so hard for me to do, mentally. I know it was all in my head. I dreaded having to do that multiple times a day. It did continue to give me an idea of how well he was healing but it’s not something that I looked forward to. 

If you are listening to this before a thyroidectomy let me tell you that it is best to have shirts that button down. Not just for when you will come back home but for a few weeks after. Basically for as long as you will have drains in. It just made it more comfortable for my husband. Also we found that if you take those tiny inch alligator hair clips you can use them to clip the drain to the shirt so that it doesn’t get caught on anything. 

 I thought the day the first drain was to come out was the best day ever until I found myself sitting in an exam room with my husband and watched them pull it out. She had to pull the span of her arms three times before it all came out. There was that much tubing in him! I didn’t even understand how that could be or even what I was looking at. SO if you can’t stomach watching something like that know that you can ask to not be there when it happens. It was crazy!

 Then we get home and I realized that wasn’t as great as I thought it would be because now I had one drain to strip and one wound to care for!!! I’ve never seen into a person the way I could from the incision and marked seeing flesh in a wound as not something I can do. It made my body itch and scream at the same time. It was hard to do. Finally the second drain could some out which meant he was progressing and also meant I was now in charge of wound care for two sites and done with drains. 

Now, could my husband do that on his own? Of course, but it would have been painful for him to do. 

Would I do it again? Yes, and I have. He has had other drains left in him when he’s been sent home from other surgeries. But it doesn’t get better. 

I think the only way I get through it is I have to flip some kind of internal switch. In the last episode I talked about trying not to just become the caregiver and negate your relationship in order to take care of your loved one. But for me, in these instances I had to be 90% caregiver and 10% wife or I never would have been able to make it through. 

 Isn’t it interesting the things that are sprung on us that we just jump right in to do because there really isn’t any other choice?

 We just have to remember to take a moment, after doing that thing you can’t believe you are doing, to take a moment to get over it. After stripping drains or taking care of wounds I would step away. I would find a quiet place like outside the front door, or my closet or bathroom and just close my eyes and breath. I’d let myself cry if I needed to. And then I’d step back into my world. 

 I think we really need to take a moment to tell ourselves that it’s all ok. Maybe even marvel that we got through it. Let that anxiety melt away before moving on to the next thing.

I’d love to hear what you would have to flip your caregiver switch on to be able to do and share how you get through it each time.

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