Today is a Win

I had some good news today. The District Nurse told me that I no longer needed one of my five post-operation wound dressings. And sure enough, when I mustered up all the bravery I have in my timid heart and looked at it, the wound has gone. Somehow, miraculously, there is skin again.

That wasn't the only thing to come out of her visit. By the time she left I felt cautiously buoyant.

I made the fifth wound in my abdomen myself, a week after I came out of hospital. There had been the inch-or-so-long snaky track of an incision coming up over the curve of my stomach from my belly button. In the hospital, where I languished longer than I should have done because of an error by a senior nurse on my ward, the scar was already starting to scab over and heal.

That's what I thought anyway. Back home, I split the scar open one night, presumably when I was turning over in bed, and made a hole in my belly 1.3cm deep. I have the precise number because after a few nurses just put a dressing over the hole, a more diligent, or perhaps just more experienced, nurse measured it.

She packed the hole so it would heal in the right way and dressed it. For about a month now other nurses have done the same. But today the nurse examined the area her colleagues had been packing and said there was no longer a hole. I didn't look too closely at that one because I could see out of the corner of my eye that my skin hasn't properly healed yet over what was once a black miniature Grand Canyon. I can wait. The important thing is that it no longer needs packing.

When you have cancer, or any chronic condition, you learn to appreciate the little victories. I had two drainage bags and two dressings stuck fast to me when I came out of hospital. Then I made a hole in myself and it became two drainage bags and three dressings. Now it's four dressings covering wounds that are all, according to the nurse, showing signs of recovery. And the hole in my body has gone.

As a wise friend once said to me, 'Today is a win.'

Bruce Hodder