I really hate to hear that you just found out you had lupus and are only 17. But I also hate it that you had to have a surgery and now it won't heal.
I am 58 and have systemic lupus (referred to as SLE) and had a total knee replacement last year and had an incision about a 14"-16" long over my knee and was lucky and had no problem at all with it healing.
The surgeon was concerned because I was a diabetic. Diabetics are known not to heal when they have any type of wound. But I didn't have any problems, I don't know if it was because my sugar was controlled or what.
Have you been tested for diabetes? Maybe you should be.
Medical problems (diabetes, heart failure, and immunosuppression) can adversely affect the ability of a wound to heal. Diabetes has long been recognized as a major impediment to wound healing. Since many wounds carry with them an infection—infections tend to impair the control of blood sugar—a vicious cycle is begun that can produce dramatic problems of limb-threatening infections. It is of utmost importance that glucose levels in those with diabetes be well controlled, most especially during a time when one is attempting to heal a wound.
Patients who suffer from heart failure also represent a difficult problem in wound healing. The primary problem in these cases is related to the leg swelling (edema) that develops as a result of the heart failure. Leg edema makes wound healing extremely difficult and allows infection to develop and spread readily.
Immunosuppression due to acquired diseases or a result of medications also contributes to wound healing problems.
Do you have a local hospital that has a center that specializes in wound healing? If so, maybe you should investigate going there.
I did have a friend that had to have a leg surgery. Then she picked up a staph infection in the would from the hospital. The leg really got worse, with the wound not healing, and the infection so bad that it had to be drained every few days. She had a home health nurse coming to her house to drain the infection.
Then, her leg got worse. She spent almost a year running back and forth to her surgeon and other doctors he referred her to and her leg just would not heal and was still infected. Then, she decided to go see my daughter, who is a physician, and had just came back home to join a practice here. My daughter could not figure out why all of her doctors kept fooling around with her leg and never finding out anything, so she ordered her an MRI on her leg to see what the problem was. Low and behold, she found the problem!!! When one of the home health nurses had packed her leg with all the gauze, one of them did NOT get it all removed from her wound (almost a hole in her leg) and the MRI showed a big mass of something in her leg. The surgeon took her to the operating room to open up the wound again and got the gauze out and re-sewed her up. With tons of antibiotics, she finally began to heal -- when the foreign object was finally gotten out of her wound!!
Don't stop with this doctor who is treating you for the wound. Ask around and find out who you could go to for a second opinion -- maybe an infectious disease control doc, or a wound care center -- and perhaps ask for a CAT scan or MRI (if your insurance will cover it) just to see if they can find any problem inside the body part that was operated on that might make it not heal.
Also ask your doc if you have any other medical condition, like diabetes, that would cause your problems.
You have to get that wound healed soon before you develop a severe infection!
Don't stop asking questions until you solve your problem. Go to as many docs as you have to in order to find someone who can help you.
Remember--your doctor may have been one who graduated at the BOTTOM of his class!!! All doctors have to be smart in order to pass the 10 years or more of training that they go through, but that does not guarantee that they are good problem solvers when they have a case that is not "text book." And ... there are some who just barely pass, and you hope that your doctor is not one of them!!!
Take care of yourself! Let us know when you finally discover your problem and start to heal!!
JLH
