I saw the hand surgeon today. He was glad to see that the graft is doing well. He's still sorry about the tendon. And he's still defensive about the donor site. Today he defended the fact that it wasn't healing well and was still painful by saying he'd done a thicker graft than usual (for split thickness grafts) because he wanted to make sure it took, given the problems that exist with grafts on irradiated tissue. According to him, a Bio-Brain dressing (like what I had last August) would have been unlikely to improve the current situation. He could offer nothing in terms of easing pain or making the healing go more quickly. And he said it was likely to be ANOTHER TWO-THREE WEEKS before the scab healed enough to fall off. Aargh.
He did go off on a few hilarious riffs, though. The last was about how losing a leg to sarcoma would be bad, but that people who lose legs can go on with their lives, and even be athletes. What was the worst was losing a hand, especially a dominant hand, because that often meant you could lose your career, and really struggle to rebuild a life. Spoken like a hand surgeon!
for any of you who is curious, here's what the donor site i'm complaining about looks like. For scale, it's about 4 inches long and 1.5 wide:
No comments:
Post a Comment