AQUILA alternating air pressure cushion

I use an AQUILA alternating air pressure cushion and it is really good. However I still got my original sore back again...it seems to be triggered by new chairs!??? I think I might have gotten this baby back in 1992! I had surgery for bladder cancer then. Anyway, it erupted in 2000, w/me getting really sick w/Osteomylitis, 3 visits to ER, a nurse vitising me 2x a day at home then finally 5 wks at Kaiser. It took them a week to diagnose Osteo + MRSA! Then I spent some weeks im isolation then more on a wound vac.Then 2.5 mo at a convalescent hospital. then several months just recuperating. It is a good idea to try to keep up strengthening exercises with therabands and maybe Zumba if you can catch it on cable or dish network. it is pretty catchy and you can do it in a reclining position! . Just move to the music, it really makes you want to move. then it came back in Fall of 2004 and erupted in 2005 with home self injected IVs for 6 weeks! They delivered frozen syringes once a week and hubby would put 3 in the fridge for the next day. Bad bowels and made my teeth really yellow. I had to get up 2x a day for bowel care, early am late pm. Ugh. took about 6 months to finish it off. THen got a new chair and the Aquila cushion. Come to find out in 2009 when got measued for anew chair that the idiots who fixed up the 2005 chair dropped the rigid seat pan into the frame of the chair giving me a 14.5" seat pan! Tells you how good the Aquila is. only after I changed into the 18" chair I had with a SLING seat--bad move== did the sore erupt once again! I laid in bed last year tryng to heal it again...but a stupid nurse wouldn't culture the wound, she just kept saying it sure smells bad---8 fu....king weeks wih no healing, so I told them to get lost. Finaly got to see a surgeon, he MRI'd it and said there was some fuzzy stuff and I said it might be infected,,,maybe you should culture it He did I got the antibiotics. But no new MRI so no one could see what was inside and the other surgeon said it looked like it was healing "OK" so I got it to heal over. then wihen I got the new chair, as usual, it takes many tries to get it right and it was too high off the ground; then the front wheels got smaller but they forget to check the angle of my knees and I was slanted downward and the fOR SOME STUPID REASON I STAYED UP DOING TAXES TIL 2 AM!!! dumb and then it broke thru again. BE SURE AND GE 100 GM OR MORE OF PROTEIN DEPENDING UPON YOUR WEIGHT. I now have a tempurpedic mattress with positioning and vibrating massinging, very good. hard to move on but I use a push up handle to help me move from the edge. I looked for Microcyn and found the co in Petaluma that sells it for $20 a bottle. www.puracyn.com 1 866-3183116. It is now called Puracyn Wound and Skin Care germ killing solution with stabilizing Preservatives. I took an old IV sringe and filled it and injected it into the hole in my butt and it seems to have helped with the smell and fevers. Who knows, I will see a surgeon on Tuesady.

A HISTORY OF MY DECUBITUS

A HISTORY OF MY DECUBITUS My problem has been long standing. First of all I can't FEEL!. I figure I must have had some sort of injury to the site (the right sit bone--the Ischim). My right side is a bit more paralyzed than the left. My original fall was in 1981 and I don't remember any problem before my bladder removal in 1992 when I had a sore on my tail bone but I don't remember anything being on my Ischim. I know I had various cushions including gel types and low profile rohos. I do remember one gel cushion going weird and it never relaxed at one point, so that my have been one cause of the sore? in any case, check out my blog: I remember when I moved to Anaheim in 1993 I was dealing with an Ischim sore, but being a Kaiser patient who had zero understanding of (or interest in helping?) spinal cord injured people--as far as I know, nor did I (even tho I had seen the pictures they had shown us in Rehab. They didn't really help me understand what the problem was so it healed superficially. It then it came back in 1998-99 after working for the Union which required long hours. And in March 2000, I was hospitalized at Kaiser after being admitted to the ER 3x and sent home twice to home health and high fevers until they finally diagnosed me with Osteomyelitis and MRSA and guaranteed me and then sent me to a nursing home, not able to get up for 2 months! What a nightmare, then after rehabbing I was OK. Then again in the fall of 2004 it started up again and in Jan 2005 I went to UC Davis and they debreeded it and sent me home w/IV antibiotics and 5 months in bed again but got up 2x a day. Then again at the beginning of 2008 I had a quick episode and I healed it over superficially. Then Nov 2009 it got bad again and I went to bed to home healthcare. By March I had willed it healed over and got up. Then a home health nurse had come and had refused to get it cultured she came for 8 weeks and kept saying "it smells bad" and "I said you should culture it" and she agreed but didn't do it!!! It healed over again and then in March 2011 I got a new chair and in the process of getting it adjusted--it was too tall, the foot rests were too long and my legs were not at 45 degree angles and I ended up staying up way too long--the sore erupted again! So I am now in bed again. Finally I have found a good home health nurse and she has set me up with a wound vac and I have been off it religiously about 21.5/7.

MORE ON THE SORE

I have been stuck in bed again as my sore has returned with a vengeance and I am trying to figure out when it occurred in the first place—way back in the past—perhaps only a few years after my injury. Who knows? The other problem I have been having is that because I am paralyzed and can’t feel, I am disassociated from my bottom half and tend not to remember things that I should. So from time to time that gets me into trouble! I recently got a new wheelchair and again, forgot the process and the supplier didn’t follow a protocol that he should have—like measuring my original chair so that he could duplicate it for the new chair! So it took about 2 months of changes to get the new one so it was like the old one! AARGH, one of those was that my knees were not at a 90 degree angle and this I think put pressure on my butt which made the sore break through again. So of course that means it wasn’t really healed right in the first place!! The Doctors in this area are not the most up to date on medical procedures for paralyzed people I guess, they only just got an accessible exam table!!! Anyway”Would a, Could a, Should a”. I feel pretty good about how it is going now. I have a competent, dedicated wound care nurse, who is communicating often with the doctor, and a wound vac that seems to be working. Who knows how long it will take for it to heal this time? I do have the tempurpedic bed which is very comfortable so that helps a lot. I have been pretty compliant only getting up to go to the toilet once a day& occasionally to have a meal with a friend or Maggie & Brett. They came today for Mother’s Day and Brett made brunch!