Duggy's Daily Wound Cleaning History

On July 22nd, 2000, I started feeling an intense cramping in my lower abdomen. By the next day, the pain had not stopped, so into the doctor we went. The x-ray showed there was some kind of swelling in the intestines, but nothing conclusive. The doctor recommended going to the ER at St. Anthony's hospital in Denver.

At the ER, after ingesting twenty ounces of orange-flavored barium, and taking a nice trip down the hall for a CT scan, a surgeon said there was definitely a blockage in the small intestine. With exploratory surgery, he could find the problem and repair it.

Meckles Diverticulitis was the prognosis. This abnormality, formed in the embryonic stage of life, occurs 20 cm up from the appendix on the small intestine. It is a small sac, like an appendix, but shorter and usually wider. Bands of tissue sometimes dangle from the Meckles sac. These bands, over the course of my life, had wrapped around the last loop of my small intestine, restricting, then ultimately cinching off the digestive passage.

In surgery, the doctor cut the bands strangling my intestine, allowing the blood to course back into the starved vessels, then stapled off the Meckles and the inflamed appendix. I then spent the next twelve days in the hospital waiting, for my digestive tract to get going again. For ten of those days, I was on IV fluids only; a great way to lose weight.

While in the hospital, the lower end of the incision on my stomach became infected. This area was cleaned out and packed with gauze tape until it healed. When I returned home, my dear wife Heather received the honor of doing this once a day for a couple of weeks.

This short film is of one day's wound cleaning.