A Successful #24!

It was a successful #24 surgery on Aug 30, 2010!!!! Although I think something got mixed up because they scheduled my surgery for 5 hours when it was really supposed to be scheduled for 9-10 hours. It ended up being right inbetween there. So it took all day on Monday. I didn't get back to my room in the ICU unit in the burn center until 10:30 that night. I feel terrible for my mom who had to wait around starting at 8am that morning.

Every hour on the hour that first night they checked for a blood flow pulse on my neck using a doppler machine and it was sweet, sweet music to my hears to hear that blood flow because that meant it was alive and well and healthy. I, of course, was in pretty good pain after surgery and it wasn't in my neck. it was in both my legs where the left leg had a donor site and the right leg was where they took the flap from. So I had pretty incredible pain there.

I cannot describe to you the feeling of having all that scar tissue taken off and having this new skin put on that is not supposed to contract, like grafts can. I felt free, like a bobble head. It is just such a wonderful feeling. I have this terrible fear that I am going to be the exception to the flap in that it will start to contract on me. The doctor who cleaned up the scars in my neck said it was just a gnarly mess of scars. And actually, there is supposedly a nerve that goes up to the right ear that they can usually work around but i was such a mess of scar tissue that they couldn't find that nerve to lift it up and clean around it so they just cleaned and ended up cutting that nerve so now I have a completely numb right ear!

The thing that scared me the most was my right leg where they took the flap from. They really took a chunk out of it leaving me barely able to walk because they took some muscle tissue with it. it's not pretty. Its pretty gruesome in fact. The doctor said it will take about two months before i get full strength back in that leg. Right now I walk with a walker and I walk very slowly and gingerly.

But doesn't my new neck look beautiful! It's going to look better and better as it heals! You should no go back and compare what my neck looked l ike before this surgery. it's in a not to earlier post.

Well, that's the update on my latest surgery. It's been a doozy.