The last few days have been much like each other. The pain has gradually been easing off in my neck, but I still can’t spend much time holding my head up unsupported. I’ve been having half a lidocaine patch on each evening so that it works overnight, and it seems to have helped with sleeping. I’m still up every couple of hours for a pee, and getting up is pretty uncomfortable, but manageable.
In the afternoon I went to have the sutures out. The nurse and the HCA took a look at the sutures and concluded they’d never seen sutures done that way and weren’t sure how to remove them without pulling too much of the suture that’s been exposed to the air back through inside, and therefore risk infection. The nurse did say that she’s only recently returned to nursing, and so maybe things have changed whilst she’s had a break, so she sought advice. Unfortunately the lead nurse at the practice was unavailable, and when she rang the ward I was discharged from, the specialist nurse was in a meeting. The nurse then asked for advice from a GP, and also started to google the types of suture. Not exactly encouraging! 😮 One of the GPs came in and looked at the sutures and after thinking about options for where to snip them, also concluded that either way external suture would be pulled through inside. They decided the best option would be to book me in with the lead nurse tomorrow, and in the meantime get me to send them some photos of the sutures so they can take another look.
By the time we left the consulting room I’d been in there for almost an hour and it had knackered me. Another evening of not doing much.