psyklops.com
Surgery
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updated 7.11.03 |
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June 30: Back to work, finally. Dad was in the hospital for 9 days, with pnuemonia and heart arythmia. June has been the medical month. June 23: I'm ready to go back to work, but Dad's in the hospital with pnuemonia. I'll hang loose 'til he's back home and settled. The only problems are my skin wigging out around the facial incision, and the flexibility of my left wrist... the skin graft is doing well, but is about as flexible as dried out leather. Other than that, I feel great. Monday, June 9: I can stop wearing the splint during the day; this means I can start using my left arm again (slowly). Swelling is going down slowly in my face; I can wear my normal glasses again. It's all good! Thursday, June 5: Stitches came out today... Dr. Watson's very happy with my progress; I'm healing well. Looks like a small bone transplant in about 3 months. Should be back to work before the end of the month. Monday, June 2: I'm home; things went very well with the surgery. They chose not to do any bone transplantation at this time, so my overall pain experience was really mild. I get stitches pulled on Thursday, and will get a better idea of what's next. I'm relaxing at home in comfort; I'm not on any medication, but my left arm is in a splint. My face is really swollen... looks like I got the tar beaten out of me. ************************************************ I went in to UCLA Medical Center at 5am on Tuesday (the 27th). I went into the OR about 7:30, but they had trouble intubating me (putting the anesthesia tube down my throat) so the real fun didn't begin until until about 9am. Dr. Watson decided againt doing any bone transplantation primarily because he didn't wan't anything to interfere with the blood vessels feeding the new tissue transplant (called the "flap"); these vessels are very delicate at first, and anything pressing on them or causing them to twist is bad news. The first 48 hours after a flap transfer are critical; if those feeder vessels are comprimised, the blood flow to the flap is cut off, and it starts to die. Well, I'm happy to say everything went very well. I was brought up to my room about 6pm, and Dad & Lia we there almost immediately. I felt pretty good, all things considered (I figured out after a bit that they didn't cut out any bone... I know what that feels like, and I wasn't hurting that much); I had a morphine pump, but didn't use it very much. Dad told me that I had to minimize moving my jaw for the next 2 days; I was not to speak or chew food or make any facial expressions. That was hard. It also made his Wednesday visit with me excruciatingly boring... we just looked at each other. I ended up trying to pretend my jaw was wired, and would talk like that, in small amounts. Every hour for 48 hours the nurses (or Doctors) would come in and use a Doppler Ultrasound pen to listen to the bloodflow in the flap. When they get the probe in the right spot it sounds like machinery! It's a dramatic, rhythmic swooshing sound, the sound of blood flowing into the flap. The Doctors later told me I had the best sounding flap on the floor (all free-flap patients come up to the same area, just around the corner from ICU). After the first 2 days, they started to listen at 2 hour intervals, being confident that I was over the hump. My left forearm, where the flap was taken from, looked like a huge Q-Tip. It was splinted with a big plaster chunk, and wrapped all up. It felt like my arm was in a vise, kind of a throbbing, but not any real sharp pain. I had to keep it pointing up as much as possible. There were 2 tubes coming out of the inside of my forearm just below the elbow for drainage (there was also a tube coming out of the left side of my head); these tubes fed little clear plastic pouches that were pinned to my smock. These tubes actually went 3-6 inches inside me!... very wierd watching these get pulled out. Like a SciFi movie. Now I have a smaller, removeable splint. There's about a 4" x 5" patch on my right thigh where a skin graft was taken to cover the opening on my left wrist. The skin from the wrist (part of the overall flap) is now in my left eye socket... it's so swollen that it looks like I'm wearing a plastic patch, but it's really skin. The left side of my head, and neck, are quite swolln out right now, but it doesn't hurt at all... just feels weird. By Friday I wasn't taking any pain meds at all, and was getting really bored. There just isn't much to do in a hospital. I got out Saturday about Noon. We came home and took it easy... Lia made meatloaf, the comfort food of the Gods. I'm still supposed to watch my chewing and facial movements. It's great to be home, and outside of not being able to get great sleep yet, I feel really good. Thanks to everybody for stoping by or calling! Now, if you're squeamish, then you may not want to view these pictures... they aren't pretty. So be warned. What looks like a patch is the actual skin transplanted from the bottom side of my wrist. See the 'About Face' page for more details on the proceedure. |
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