Following my nurse's recommendation, this past week I actively washed the port removal area, instead of just letting soapy water run over it in the shower. The steri-strips finally came off today.
I don't know why this area is so slow to heal! As you can see in the photo, the top half of the incision is fully closed and healed, but the bottom half is not! I wouldn't call the bottom half "open", but the edges definitely were not pulled close enough together by the steri-strips.
I guess this scar will need to heal in the same way the port placement scar healed; skin will need to grow in to fill that gap. At least the gap is not as big as it was before. But it will presumably take a loooooooong time to heal. Like, months instead of weeks. Again.
I'm pretty bummed. I was hoping this would be a smoother recovery, so that "port removal" could be a thing I could put behind me, instead of something that will drag on and on. So weird that my two massive mastectomy scars healed just fine - not to mention my C-section incision, twice! - and this small little incision has given me so much trouble.
I feel validated in my decision to ask for a new doctor for the port removal. If I hadn't had a different doctor from my port placement surgery, I would totally blame this lack of incision closure on that doctor. I mean, maybe it's still the doctor's fault; maybe both doctors aren't very good at closing incisions. Or maybe it's just me, I'm just not healing well there, who knows why.
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