Saturday, January 16, 2010

"Special Wounds"

I just completed my first 2 weeks of work at Baylor Irving's Comprehensive Wound Care Center (that's a mouthful). The clinic is an outpatient clinic treating people with hard-to-heal wounds, or "special wounds" as Tim likes to call them. A lot of our patient population is diabetic, with poor circulation and uncontrolled blood sugars, but we see a huge variety of people from burn victims, post surgical openings, people immobile for some reason with pressure ulcers, autoimmune diseases like Scleroderma, post-transplant patients with difficulty healing because of steroids and anti-rejection medications, and we have 2 hyperbaric chambers for several other conditions.
Its a new type of medicine to me. I love the science behind why wounds aren't healing and it's hugely rewarding to see something you used to be able to fit your fist in close up (gross, I know). There is a huge variety and always more to learn. Our wound care center just opened the beginning of December so we are still working out kinks with programs, ordering the correct products, but most of all, still waiting for the patients to come. We are picking up some but there has been a lot of down time at work, something I have never had to deal with. It's taking some adjusting but I'm finding ways to fill my time. Yesterday I went to the bigger wound care center in downtown Dallas and caught a vision of what our clinic will be one day. It reassured me that I'm in a good place, I do love the work I'm doing, and gave me the boost I needed to make it through some slow days.