Incision after SNB just opened up

Briannek

I hope you can find humor in this post but I also hope you can help me. I had a SN biopsy last Friday. They placed steri strips on the incision site and told me to remove when they started to pull off. I felt they had "peeled" off enough yesterday and I took them off. Now the funny part... I work in an office and while on the phone with a client my co-worker starts screaming from her cubicle. I quickly end my call to check on her. There is a crowd of people forming around here. I look at her and see pure terror in her eyes and she looks at me and says "it's a mouse". I immediately jump on my swivel chair. I have enough sense to realize that's not safe so.... Well the ground is not safe,there's a mouse, so I then proceed to jump on my desk. The crowd as now gathered around me and they say it's under my desk. I can not move because of shear terror. My other coworker says it's over here now can someone get it. Hearing her say that means to me the coast is clear, I then jump off the desk, over my chair, look at my coworker and we run out of building like ours lives depended on it.

Fast forward two hours later I'm visiting my aunt and she wasnts to see my incision. I look down and there is blood on my shirt and bra. She then looks at the incision and says it has opened up. I do not believe its infected I believe it was the excitement over Micky or Minnie.

My surgeon is two hours away and my local hospital is nicknamed as "dead central". I really do not want to make a trip to either if not necessary.

I have a post-op in Cleveland on Tuesday. Has anyone had this experience and do you have any recommendations?

BarredOwl

Hi Briannek:

Curse Mickey / Minnie. Please call your surgeon's office and connect to the surgeon "on-call". There should be one available in off hours. You can describe the current appearance and any fliud output and obtain professional advice re whether, when and where to be seen. If they say you can wait, don't forget to ask about steps for wound care in the interim.

BarredOwl

ChiSandy

That’s what happened to me (the failed SNB incision, not the mouse) 3-1/2 weeks post-op. The Steri-Strips had long since fallen off my lumpectomy incision, but I was growing a seroma the size of a tangerine at the site of the SNB. At my 2-week followup, I asked the BS’ NP if I should have the seroma drained and remove that incision’s Steri-Strips, but she nixed both (“you’ll get an infection if we drain it, and you need to wait for the strips to peel and start curling before you remove them”). A week later, I went for my initial RO consult. The RO looked at my breast and removed the Steri-Strips, saying they’d curled enough. But three days after that, I was leaning over the bathroom sink to brush my teeth and I heard a hissing that sounded exactly like that when my recently-deceased elder cat would pee against vertical surfaces. I turned to scold whichever of my two surviving cats was doing that (neither ever had), but there was no cat in the room. I then felt my blouse on the right side had gotten wet......but no, I hadn’t turned the taps on yet. It was only when I looked down at the pink rug on the floor and saw blood dripping on it that I realized what happened: my incision had opened and the seroma had exploded.

I immediately tried to cover the incision with the largest Band-Aid I had, but it was gushing pink fluid. I smooshed a washcloth and then a towel against my boob and put an old hoodie on over it (blood-colored, it turned out) and called the hospital--the idiot operator kept me on hold ten minutes before telling me there was no nurse on call available to speak to me, and took a message. Nobody called back after another ten minutes, so I called back, and again she insisted there were no nurses. She asked if I wanted to leave “an emergency message.” (Duh). Within 5 minutes my BS’ NP called back and said to hustle up there. (I hadn’t called the Breast Center first because Fridays were my BS’ surgery days and I assumed that, like my orthopod’s NP, she’d be in the OR with her). Took over half an hour, as we (my housekeeper drove me because I was not about drive) were stuck behind a moron who kept texting.

The NP said, “Oh, these things happen. You’ll be fine.” I asked her what about her prior warning that draining the seroma would cause an infection--and she repeated, “you’ll be fine, I’ll just clean, pack and dress the wound and show you how to change it.” Say WHA??? “It has to heal from the inside out, and it’ll be a few weeks” she replied. I had a conference to attend in Iowa and was not about to walk around with gauze stuffed into a gaping wound for weeks--gauze that’d have to be changed several times a day. I asked why it couldn’t be sutured, and she sniffed and said, “I’ll go get the other surgeon.” He came in and whistled. “Struck a gusher, eh?” I asked him if he could suture it and he replied, “Well, of course. But first I have to express it." I didn’t feel a thing, not even the Lidocaine he injected. But I heard a disgusting hissing gooshing sound, and he got about another half-cup of fluid before suturing it closed. I asked why it had popped after my RO declared it safe enough to remove the Steri-Strips, and he said it was the weight of my oversized breast that pulled it open--and that despite weeks of packing, it probably wouldn’t have healed, and probably would have gotten infected to boot. Since I wear a 38 I bra size, I asked if I should have gotten a reduction along with the lumpectomy. Ever the diplomat (my surgeon is his partner), he replied, “Well, you weren’t my patient then, and that’s water under the bridge.” When I got the sutures removed 2 weeks later, the incision had fully healed. I asked my surgeon about reduction, and she shot down the idea, saying it would have been a long and painful recovery and might have resulted in more seromas. Meanwhile, the seroma has shrunken to less than the size of a soybean, and mammography a few weeks ago confirmed it’s just a tiny seroma and not an enlarged node.

One good thing came of it, though. After getting home from the suturing (stopping first at Hoosier Mama to console myself with the first of an ill-advised post-treatment series of slices of Smores cream pies--which series lasted through my radiation treatments--that added 10 lbs.) I googled “exploding SNB seroma” and up popped a link to a bco post titled “M-m-m-My Seroma” (remember The Knack?). And so I discovered bco, joining a couple months after my diagnosis and surgery. Wish I’d known about it when I first had my diagnostic imaging done and biopsy scheduled: the uncertainty ruined an otherwise perfect trip to New Orleans, Scranton and a folk festival--all I could think of in all through the music law course lectures, wonderful meals, and in between my gigs was “I might have cancer. What if it’s cancer? OMG, I bet I have cancer--what will happen to me and my family?” playing in an endless loop. I could have had all of you here to calm me down and give me solid information and distraction.