Daily Dressing Changes and Equipment - the missing version

What does daily dressing changes mean? It means pain in the ass. For both of us.

Once a day, he has to be interrupted from whatever he is doing to come have his dressing changed by me, when it is a good time for me to do it. Sounds kind of selfish of me doesn't it? Let me explain. When I'm off, then no big deal because we can do it whenever. But I hate waiting until the end of the day, because then I'm tired. Add a shower for him to that, and it's a major production. There is no such thing as a 'quick shower' anymore for Carlos. Then add the fact that he has always been a daily shower kind of guy as part of his bedtime routine. For him to shower, he must move all the equipment into the waterproof shower bag...

Here is the sanitarium cart that I searched far and wide for with Beth.  The goal was to find something pretty but not expensive, with wheels.  2 out of 3 isn't bad :p  The blips of color on the right back part of stuffed fake flowers.  I feel like those really add a great touch :)  The top part is used to set up the sterile dressing change.  You can see the long cord that connects him to the power module during the night, resting on top right now.  On the second shelf is the power module, which plugs into the wall.  It has a backup battery that's good for 30 minutes if there is a power outage.  A very loud alarm goes off in that case, and we switch him to batteries.  On the bottom shelf is the battery charger.  It can charge up to 4 of the 8 batteries at a time.



Here we have the bag he wears....his 'manpurse' as we call it.  He refuses to let us bling it - what a lame-ass.  It even has a luggage tag because if he were unconcious, we wouldn't want someone taking that off of him.  Inside the bag are the 2 batteries and the controller (which is like a small computer).  This bag with equipment weighs about 5 pounds.

What you see in this picture below is the dressing, with the driveline coming out of it, and going to the bag.  This is what attaches the pump inside his chest to the computer and batteries outside, in the bag.



Here, you see the driveline exit wound.  He has healed very well and remained infection free for the last 3+ months since having this placed.  The driveline is made with some sort of fancy material that allows the skin to actually grow onto it!

And here's the bag that must go everywhere with him.  Going to the store to pick up juice?  Yes, the bag goes too.  It contains backups of all his equipment (controller, batteries, manual, etc.).  Won't let me bling this either :p

And there you have it.