Spitting Stitches

If you have some major incision made on your body, they usually do an underlayer of dissolving stitches and then staples or whatever else over that. This is a practical thing to do, as it gives you reinforcements for the healing process. In theory, this works very well and can help you soon recover from whatever caused the incision in the first place.

In reality, sometimes it's not that simple. Stitches don't dissolve as quickly for everyone. Sometimes it can take quite a while for them to completely break down. In the meantime, some people's bodies start to reject the foreign objects. And as I am sure you can guess, I fall into this group . . . because OF COURSE I do.

Basically what happens is that your body begins to try to force the remaining bits of stitches out of your body. This can be a slow, gentle process . .  or can can be your body forms a nice little pimple like thing that bursts open and begins to bleed for a while. It looks horrible and scary and you begin to question if you are ever going to heal. But then of course, you Google what is going on and find out it's just your body being annoying.

My first stitch spit was of the more gentle nature. I had a bit of white begin to protrude from a small cut on the scar. At first, I just thought it was an odd bit of skin, but then I noticed it was beginning to fray on the edge. My body does a lot of strange stuff, but fraying isn't one of them. I cut this bit of stitch off as near to my skin as I could and tried to ignore it.

Today, I had the second type happen. A place that had healed and looked perfectly nice has suddenly ripped itself open and is causing problems. I can see the bit of stitching, but it's still to shallow for me to reach. I'm guessing that in a day or two, it will work its way out and I can cut it off as well. In the meantime, I'll just do my best to make sure its little area of protest doesn't get infected or anything.

I keep reminding myself that in a couple of months, all of this will hopefully be behind me and I can just get on with my life. There are small setbacks and weirdnesses now, but in time, all of it will die down and things will be normal. Sometimes, though, like when a place that looked healed breaks open, it's not so easy to convince yourself of that. I'll keep trying though, because it's honestly one of the few things I can do.