There are many different levels of surgery; some procedures are done on an out-patient basis while others require a hospital stay. After being treated for a rather nasty bedsore I was poked, prodded and scraped many times. This eventually led to several trips to the emergency room for a debridement when the pain was so severe that I couldn’t see straight. This is not a pleasant experience under any circumstance. A debridement is when dead or dying skin is removed from a part of the body; this of course is connected to living tissue and some of that is also removed if there is even a remote chance that it will start to lose its ability to fully recover.
AnestaFoam was one of the topical numbing agents that was used when I was in a physical therapy unit after my amputation. The bedsore was approximately 10cm x 13cm and 3cm deep (down to the tailbone) – to get a visual of the size, take a large orange and cutting it in half. That was the size of my wonderful bedsore. AnestaFoam was used before the procedure that a wound care specialist performed; since this was a physical therapy hospital that was the best that they could do for surface pain. Prior to this I had two emergency room debridements and had an IV / intravenous cocktail that didn’t knock me out but blocked about 80% of the pain. AnestaFoam is a spray-on product in a 30 gram bottle; this is not a scheduled product but it can be extremely hard to find in retail drug stores.
This product worked well to numb the surface of the area around the bedsore; the wound care specialist applied it and waited about fifteen minutes before he started poking me with a cotton swab to test the sensitivity. He started cutting away the skin about ten minutes later with the whole process taking about an hour. I was in pain when he was working on me but I knew that things would only get worse with each day that passed; AnestaFoam cut down on about half of the pain but I still felt him pulling on the surrounding skin and when he would make cuts into the living tissue.
AnestaFoam is not a long-lasting product; it is designed for short procedures and for surface application. He used a little less than half the bottle and it was packed up with my supplies when I was discharged. Now I use it for minor surface skin irritations to my residual limb, general skin irritations and for moderate phantom pains. I have already asked my plastic surgeon to get me a few more cans; while it does not tackle severe phantom pains it does work when I have the sensation that my leg is still attached to me rather than the feeling of pain in my ankle or calf muscle. If you are having a minor procedure that is being done on an out-patient basis or are receiving home health care for a bedsore, I highly recommend asking if AnestaFoam is something that can be used to reduce associated pain or at the very leave offer you some level of pain management.
