I had a doctor appointment today and I haven't seen him for about 6 weeks while my neck was healing. My mother drove me and we of course went over the night before because my appointment was at 10am. I went in expecting to start expansions again when we got different news.
The next step is surgery #23 overall and #5 on my neck alone. He has decided not to use the tissue expanders that are in my scapulas and do a flap again where he stretches and wraps the skin around my neck but instead to do a different kind of flap. This kind of flap is called a "Free Flap" where he is going to basically take a chunk of skin out of my thigh (that includes tissue, muscle, fatty tissue and blood vessels), remove the scar tissue on the front center of my neck, place the new skin (from my thigh) where he removed the scar tissue and tie the blood vessels together. This is NOT a graft because blood vessels are being taken with the skin. He will then also have to do liposuction on the rest of my thigh so that I don't have this dent, more or less, in my leg.
Since this is a flap and NOT a graft, I repeat, there will be no contractures, which is what my body really likes to form. That is the advantage to doing it this way. The disadvantage is it is quite the surgery, lasting at least 8 hours. Now I've been through a 7 hour surgery but with my history this will probably last more than 8 hours. Oh my poor mother, waiting for so long, hoping there are no complications, which I also have a good history of.
As I said in the beginning of this post, it has been awhile since I've seen my dear doctor because we were waiting on my neck to heal so it was really good to see him. He gave me a big hug, which I love getting from him :) He said he hopes to get me into the OR as soon as he can and I will hopefully hear about getting a surgery scheduled by Monday. I hope I hear sooner. I am anxious to get this done because my neck is getting worse and worse in the center front. A terrible contracture is forming in a major way and it's pulling my lip out again as well as my right eye.
Well, that's the latest!
2 comments:
Wow! It sounds scary and kind of exciting all at the same time. That will be awesome if that all works out well. I will be praying for you! I am sure it is going to be great.
THANK YOU for sharing the details with us, Sarah!
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