Home Lifestyle Patient finds healing at FirstHealth Wound Care & Hyperbarics

Patient finds healing at FirstHealth Wound Care & Hyperbarics

Wound care patient Lynne O’Quinn and Matthew Reinhardt, M.D.
FirstHealth

RAEFORD — When Lynne O’Quinn turned a corner too quickly at home and ran into a slate stool, earning a deep gash in the process, she was expected to have a relatively smooth recovery. Her lack of vascular issues or history of diabetes indicated minimal complications. 

O’Quinn is an accomplished songwriter and the founder and director of His Outreach Worldwide children’s ministry. She is active, healthy, and frequently travels the globe for mission trips. Your typical wound patient, she is not. Yet, the mundane accident resulted in nearly a year of doctors visits and touch-and-go recovery. 

It was a Saturday night last May when the accident occurred, and O’Quinn planned to wait it out over the weekend, certain the cut would improve. By Monday she was at the emergency room. Before going to FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital-Hoke, O’Quinn saw her primary care physician, who told her the wound was turning gangrene and needed emergency medical attention. 

“I knew it was bad,” she said. “I didn’t realize how bad it really was.” 

After a debridement surgery, O’Quinn was referred to FirstHealth Wound Care & Hyperbarics in Hoke County. It wasn’t long after she started treatment that staff ran into an unusual complication.

“We found out my skin is extremely allergic to a lot of different things,” O’Quinn said. “We would try one thing, and it would just break my skin out like crazy. They would treat the wound okay, and other parts of my leg would have turned really red and angry. That went on back and forth for months, just trying to find the best thing at the time to treat the wound and my leg.”  

O’Quinn said it was a tough situation for everyone involved, but they found ways to laugh through it. 

“The staff was such a fun, fun group. It got to where every week my husband and I looked forward to going in there, and seeing everybody, and sharing jokes,” she said. “We would leave there and go to lunch and it turned into our date day.” 

After more trial and error with products and dressings, wound care staff Matthew Reinhardt, M.D., and Paige Britt, R.N., decided to test out an Unna boot. The special gauze covered O’Quinn’s leg and was layered with calamine lotion. O’Quinn said that’s when her treatment took a promising turn and the wound began healing more quickly. “It was real tight on the leg, but that made the blood flow and stay in the area,” she said.

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With her hypersensitive skin, Reinhardt said seeing O’Quinn frequently was a vital component to her recovery.

“Open wounds are prone to become infected. You’re basically missing your barrier, your protection from the outside world,” he said. “So chronic wounds are prone to become infected, and it can be recurrent. The fact that we were seeing her weekly and reassessing, and putting her on antibiotics when indicated, helped her wound heal.”  

Eventually, Reinhardt decided to have O’Quinn wear the Unna boot full time. Though uncomfortable, it was her best option for treatment. Whenever they took the boot off and tested smaller bandages, her skin would quickly break out and start bleeding and cracking, she said. 

Then, finally, the day she’d been anticipating for more than nine months came. O’Quinn had her last wound care appointment in February of this year. “If you had seen pictures of it before, and saw my leg now, it’s amazing,” she said. “You can look at my leg now and hardly even see a thing.” 

A beach girl at heart, O’Quinn is looking forward to spending the summer months enjoying the ocean unburdened by a bandaged leg. Even with the newfound freedom, she said she still appreciates the fond memories the doctors and staff helped her form during an otherwise stressful time. 

“I really enjoyed going there,” O’Quinn said. “I know that’s kind of crazy. Even now, my husband and I are like, ‘It’s Thursday, we miss them.’” 

FirstHealth offers Wound Care & Hyperbarics in the Specialty Centers Building on the campus of Moore Regional Hospital in Pinehurst, at Moore Regional Hospital-Richmond in Rockingham and at the Physician Offices & Specialty Center on the campus of Moore Regional Hospital – Hoke. Learn more about FirstHealth Wound Care & Hyperbarics at www.firsthealth.org/wound.

 



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