So I had a hematoma….

So the larger incision site had a painful little egg sized lump under it. I figured it was a seroma or hematoma and would eventually resolve on its own. Surgeon palpated it at my one week follow up and didn’t say anything. Well Monday 18 days after my VSG surgery it went from egg sized to softball sized. I took it easy and decided to call the surgeon Tuesday morning. While driving my son to school it had found a way through two tiny gaps in my incision and my poor anti-wls 17 year old saw the gory mess ( even though it started feeling much better with some of the pressure released). I got home cleaned up in the shower a little bit and drained it some more until it stopped draining. I called the surgeon’s office while headed toward the ED in case he wanted me to go in to have the other WLS physician to take a look while he was in surgeries at another hospital. My hospital is an hour away ( the one I work at where almost everything is covered) instead of the one 5 minutes away. And I was back and forth with his office staff, WLS coordinator at my hospital and stopping to take pictures to send to show him between surgeries. I was almost to the hospital when they told me to turn around and come to his home office on Wednesday and he would take care of it in office. So I get there and wait and wait some more (it’s ok I found two Xboxes for my sons while waiting.. no easy feat-super mom pulling off Xmas miracles with GameStop and Walmart) he comes in and we chat about my protein ( not enough at 60- 65 I need to use more shakes and powder protein from food is extra) I whined about my stall at 308 and he had no time for it, says we look at my weight over two years and I am already down 9% of excess weight. Finally he sets me up on the exam table …pops open my incision and starts squeezing out a big ass hematoma (a big mass of old congealed blood). He thanked me for draining it as much as I did and then proceeded to clean it out with gauze. He gave me a quick lesson on wound packing and sent me out with a ton of wound care supplies and tools. It’s about an 1.5 inches deep and about the size of an egg all around. He said the hospital would have not taken the steps to open it up to remove the hematoma and I know from personal experience that they would have just assumed infection and admitted me for 6 or 7 days wasting time with IV antibiotics. Now I knew from the drainage it wasn’t infected, but if this type of thing happens to you call your surgeon even if it’s on the way to the ER…. Leaking wounds this far out from surgery is not normal