TLDR -
I had a wound dehiscence/early spit stitch on my left side, the first pictures are when I first noticed it, before an appointment where the visible stitches were cut out. The next batch of pictures are after that appointment. The final batch was the last stretch of healing after I was cleared to start stretching. And then a fully healed picture. This was the absolute hardest part of my recovery but it’s mostly over now yayyy <3
-------------------
Super fun story time!
One day before I was 3 weeks out, some of the steri strips were starting to come away and
I noticed the incisions on my left side nearer to the armpit looked extra irritated and put some extra dressing on it.
Then the next day, exactly three weeks out, I took a closer look at it and realized I could see white, round fat 
. I kind of panicked and called my surgery center and sent them a few pictures. They told me it was not infected, that I could still shower, and dress it every day. I was also advised to stop stretching that side and keep doing 24/7 compression. I was set to start part time compression at three weeks but that was called off.
The next couple days it started looking better? Or at least not worse? So I just kept dressing them every day.
4 days after I first noticed it was the first day I thought it got bigger instead of smaller so I called the office again and got an appointment for 2 days later. At that appointment an amazing nurse at my surgeon's office snipped out the stitches she could see, put some silver nitrate on it, taught me how to do a little wound packing + wet to dry dressing, and told me to change it every day. And they gave me some good gauze and bandaids but bigger.
It was mostly just very comforting mentally for me and I got another confirmation that the rest of my incisions looked good.
After that,
my sense of peace was in the driver seat and I did not change the dressing for 2.5 days. Don’t!!! Do!!! That!!!!! You can see some in the pictures that a patch of skin gets discolored,
this is because I left the dressing on too long. It was not painful and not particularly irritated. But it definitely could have been avoided. I changed my dressings every day without exception after that.
It slowly, slowly got shallower after that. At my 6WPO appointment (11/25) my surgeon said I could stop 24/7 compression and start to move that arm more to avoid stiff shoulder. At that point it was about the size of a bandaid so I backed off from my bigger dressings.
After the main wound started to scab (12/2), I had a weird moment. I pressed a tissue against the wound to check if it was still producing goop and definitely got goop. In fact,
there was a little pocket of goop under my skin? Not blood, not clear, just off white/yellow goop colored and NOT PUS. I called my surgeon's office again, described the incident, and
was told it was no biggie, so yay. It did not reoccur which was probably a good sign.
Now it is still a little scabby but 100% skin and I am so happy!!!
Having an open wound was the most stressful, distressing part of my recovery. What helped calm me down was knowing I was doing everything I could by confirming with my surgery center and learning more about what my body was doing by doing a bit of research on second intention healing. In brief- it’s true when they say it has to heal ‘from the bottom up’. First intention healing is what the rest of the incisions are doing where two sides of a wound heal together and have a thin line of a scar. But once you have an open wound, that process has ended and second intention healing is already happening. This means the body is creating a bunch of new scar tissue in the wound and it has to build up slowly to the skin layer before scar tissue can grow there and join the skin.
I wanted to post this because I rarely ever see full timelines and I wanted to be a resource but please keep in mind that if a different wound or your wound doesn’t look like mine that does not necessarily mean something is wrong, please contact your surgeon or doctor no matter what.
To anyone else going through a wound, this too shall pass <3
and I just can't be assed making a 3rd account.
I lost some then regained a bit more while training.
