After almost a decade of living with a complete spinal cord injury I thought I was going to be one of the lucky ones. I wouldn’t get a pressure sore. Nope, not me! But then it happened, during a short stay in a skilled nursing facility. And it has taken MORE THAN 2 YEARS to heal completely. Here’s what’s finally been working, and how you can seek compensation for YOUR pressure injury if it occurred while in a healthcare facility.
What’s A Pressure Wound?
A pressure wound, pressure ulcer, or pressure sore, is an injury to the skin that develops when too much pressure is placed for too long. It looks like a harmless little purple mark at first. It shows up on your tailbone, your heel, your hip. DON’T IGNORE IT! Give it a little push. Does it turn white? You might be okay. If it doesn’t, that wound is already deep.
How To Heal A Pressure Wound
Offload It
If you need to be in your wheelchair a lot, get an order from your primary care physician for a wheelchair seat that has a sacrum cut out, if it’s a tailbone wound.
If you can’t get one of those you’re going to need to stay in bed. But not just any old bed. You’re going to need a low air loss mattress. Your primary care physician can prescribe one of those too. They may want to involve Wound Care. A wound care doctor might be able to get insurance to approve the seat and the mattress that you need faster.
If you don’t have a special mattress or seat, you’ll need to do regular offloading. That means shifting every 15 minutes in your chair by tilting it back or forward. That means wedging a pillow under your back in bed on one side of your body for a couple hours and then under the other side of your body.
Stem Cell Therapy
If you can get your health insurance to approve treatments, stem cell therapy can work wonderfully. Medicare only paid for 10 weeks of treatment for my stage 4 ulcer but I noticed significant improvement in just that amount of time. My wound’s diameter decreased in size and became more shallow as well.
Protein
For a while I was really struggling with my health. I had multiple surgeries– had to get a colostomy after a bowel blockage, and opted for a super pubic catheter after multiple urinary tract infections. I dropped a lot of weight and wasn’t consuming the protein that my skin needed to heal. So I started drinking protein shakes and taking the supplement Juven. Slowly my caregivers began to notice a change in my wound. It was beginning to fill in. Now I could get up and sit on my new seat with the cutout without experiencing autonomic dysreflexia. No longer was the bone becoming infected. I was finally beginning to heal.
Dermawound
The true catalyst and the healing of my pressure sore was when I found this product online. Dermawound isn’t covered by insurance so you have to purchase it out of pocket. It’s around $50 for a tub that lasts about 2 months. The iodine-based salve looks like an orange sugar scrub. You just pack it into the wound and cover it with gauze and silicone dressing twice a day. The product has been healing my wound faster than any before it. It doesn’t require any debridement of tissue, wound vac procedures, or anything fancy. Check out www.dermawound.com
Do You Have A Pressure Sore Injury?
If you have sustained a pressure sore injury after your spinal cord injury, try these tips!
If you developed your pressure ulcer while you were in a skilled nursing facility or a hospital you may be entitled to compensation.
Check out scipressuresores.com and share your story. Join our campaign and contact our team at The Spinal Cord Injury Law Firm, PLLC today.
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