I dress myself now

I used to get dressed by the nurses at the unit, now once a week a just do it myself.

I had to do my dressing tonight, I do it atleast once a week. I do it right before setting up my machine. It ads about 30-45 minutes to setup. It can be really awkward to do, having to place a thin bandage in a pretty specific area on my chest. It's one of those things that it's a pain in the ass to do because it just ads more time to setting up everything, but its also something that I like doing when I'm doing it because it feels great to get the old one off and clean the area. The skin is very sensitive undernieth the bandage, after all the only air it has gotten for the last year and a half is the 1 hour a week when the bandage gets changed.

I use a combination of providone-iodine and sterile saline to clean the area. It has to be sterile so I wear a medical mask and gloves. I use the tweezers provided in a sterile dressing kit to wipe the area down with sterile gauze soaked in either the providone to sterilize the area or saline to clean the providone off.

The dressing is made up of two halfs, the lower half is a more tradtional stretcy but this bandage material. The upper part of a really thin plastic. Of course both halves have adhesive. The skin is especially sensitive on the lower half where it doesn't get any light either. Just imagine your post sensitive skin, and thats what that small area on my chest feels like.

Owen