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As you should
have read in the "How Wounds Heal" section, there are 3
primary phases to wound healing:
- Immediately
after surgery your wound will enter the Inflammation
phase (Day 1 to Day 5) during which the body will
send fluids containing plasma proteins, blood cells and
antibodies to the wound site causing swelling, pain,
fever, and redness around the wound site.
- After 4 or 5
days the wound enters the Migration/Proliferation
phase where healing truly begins. At this point your
need for pain medication should drop off sharply unless
your surgeon put a long-acting anesthetic into the wound. If you
did get the anesthetic you won't feel much pain at all until
about day 3 or 4, then there may be a few days where you
suddenly experience pain, this can be alarming since you were
lulled into a false sense of being pain-free. By about day 5 you
will begin to notice Exudate in the wound (Exudate is
the by-product of healing, it is a gooey greenish-white
substance that will look like pus but isn't). This
"true healing"
phase is usually complete:
- 2 weeks for a lancing
- 4 weeks for a closed
incision
- 8 weeks for open healing.
- The final
phase is Maturation/Remodeling and this phase
continues for up to 18 months after your surgery.
It is the process of remodeling of the collagen fibers laid down
in the proliferation phase. Nerve endings are
re-growing....In short, there is a lot of activity still
happening long after your wound has healed. You may continue to
feel tugging and tension from deep inside the wound for quite a
while as the new tissue stabilizes. This will be a time when
Pilonidal Paranoia strikes! Every twitch from the wound
will send you into a panic, everyone goes through it.
When
infections occur, this delays the healing time for the
wound and results in greater
formation of scar tissue. According to
several medical studies, MOST (but certainly not all)
occasions of recurrent Pilonidal Cysts show up in the
first year following surgery.
You should be
able to go back to work within 1 week after surgery and
be able to resume most normal activities (excepting
heavy sports) within two weeks. If at all possible, ask
for a full 2 weeks off after surgery.
This page last updated:
03/25/2007
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