36. DIY Surgery
I had a patient who had surgery on their leg a few weeks beforehand, and the dissolvable sutures were taking a long time to leave. No big deal, it can happen. However, it was causing some inflammation, pulling and swelling. Instead of going back to their surgeon to have them removed, they cut one or two, and to their horror noticed pus in the gaping suture hole.
Half an hour of rinsing and removing this “pus” layer with tweezers and a scalpel revealed it went all the way down to the muscle. How horrible. But here’s what was really going on. It turns out that body fat can look like pus, and the fat layer doesn’t have many nerve endings. Yep, this person just cut away at their fat layer like, well, an amateur.