I had a doctor appointment yesterday with my burn doctor. It was to check on my tissue expander and see how the home expansions were coming along. Basically an assessment. It went really well and it was good to see my doctor again. Particularly since evidently he had a near death incident himself in December when he was operating on a patient and suddenly doubled over with severe abdominal pain. He was rushed to the ER where they discovered his stomach had flipped and then rushed him into emergency surgery. You can die from that shit. He was incredibly lucky. And so am I because I don't know what I would have done without him as my burn doctor. He's done incredible things for me and he knows me, he knows my body and how it reacts. We have a history. We've been working together for four years now. So I'm very thankful that he's still here. So even though it was a serious thing, we had a few laughs about it with jabs like, "glad you didn't die," and "try not to do something like that while you're operating on me."
He seemed happy with how the expander looked and how much we had been filling every week. Then he went ahead and did a fill himself while I was there. He filled one syringe which holds 60cc's and injected it into my expander then went back to fill it again and I thought he was just going to fill it with 20cc's more as we had been doing at home for a total of 80 but I noticed he filled the syringe to it's max making that 120cc's and I'm thinking, oh my, he's gonna push it. I thought he would be done with that but he went back to fill the syringe a third time! My dad suddenly asked how much he was putting in today and with his killer smile he said, "I'm not telling till after I'm done." I responded with, "smart man." His back is to me while he fills the syringe from the saline bag and I'm situated in such a way that I can't really see how much was in the syringe when he was done filling it and came to me so I wasn't sure how much was in that third syringe. But I was feeling it. I was feeling pressure and stretch. When he was done he had put in 150cc's. Nearly twice the amount we were doing at home. And I could feel it.
Then he got some supplies together for us before sitting down at the computer beside me and figuring out a tentative surgery date. He wants about four more fills of at least 100cc's which puts us at a possible February 22nd date for my 38th surgery. I'll only be in the hospital a few days since it's a flap procedure so there won't be a graft or donor site. I hope there will be enough skin to stretch not only around the side of my neck but also around my neck under my chin to relieve some tightness there as well in the hopes that it will get me closer to my lip surgery. So I'm really gonna push it with the expansions these next few weeks to really get that skin stretched and I probably won't be feeling the best these next four weeks.
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