Stitch abscess

[Guest guest]

Has anyone heard of or had a stitch abscess? I've had several red,

sore, puffy spots along my incision for the last few weeks (surgery

was 9/24). Also, at the very top of my incision is a wound about 1-

inch long and 1/2 inch wide. It drains, sometimes scabs over at the

edges, and is just generally sore. A couple of days ago, some

surgical thread used to close my incision started poking out of the

wound. I clipped it off. Apparently my stitches are not dissolving

as they should and have been irritating my incision. At almost 7

weeks out I didn't feel this was appropriate for my incision, but my

PCP and a colleague of his both said it was a stitch abscess and

nothing needed to be done but wait it out.

Yesterday I barely bumped my stomach on a box I was lifting and felt

a lot of pain. A few hours later the pain was still there, even

getting a little worse. I phoned my PCP, but couldn't get through to

him. I spoke to a nurse, but my PCP's regular nurse just went on

maternity leave and he's using different temps to get thought the

next three months, so I'm not certain he got my message. I knew he

didn't want to prescribe antibiotics for this, as I'd discussed it

with him before, but yesterday I did ask the nurse to ask the doc if

I could get some pain pills for the pain. I didn't hear back from

him, and no prescription was called in. I tried twice more to call,

but each time I could only get the receptionist, who told me she'd

send a message to the nurse reminding her of my prescription

request. Still nothing.

I was going to try to tough it out, but ended up going to the ER

around 9:30 last night. The attending physician took one look, said

there were several stitch abscesses, and sliced three small incisions

on top of the original surgical incision. Right away, bloody pus

welled out and was swabbed up. That didn't really hurt, but when he

started digging around in the holes with tweezers looking for

stitches, now THAT hurt! He found one stitch thread and clipped it

off, and just left the holes to drain. The pain I had had for so

long was gone almost immediately. He then told me to go home and not

worry about it, everything would heal up without further intervention

or antibiotics.

Now I have four wounds along my incision, each from 1/2 to 1-inch

long and half as wide. I'm worried about the infection returning.

Has anyone else had this problem, and how did things turn out?

Thank you,

Shelly

BPD/DS (open)

Sept. 24, 2001

Dr. McConnell

OHSU