Dr. Reid took off his poultice this morning. The graft looked good -- 90% took. This was the main reason for this surgery, so this is a big success. I don't have an open hole in my arm anymore. Yeah!
It does have a slight odor. Reid said that reflects a common skin surface bacteria, which, now that the graft is open to the air -- and gets to be washed in the shower! -- should dissipate. Meanwhile, the small places where the graft didn't take should fill in. Going forward, it will heal, but the graft will never have nerves. And, I don't know what it will look like, ultimately. Right now, the surface doesn't look as much like a pie lattice as a waffle stamp:
He cut the stitches holding the dressing in place, removed the gauze (which of course was stuck and required pulling) and extracted the 14 staples, all without anesthetic in an open room at the back of the office (not in an examining room w/ a closed door). That meant that everyone in the suite -- including Bill and the strangers sitting in the waiting room -- heard my yelps and whimpers. We knew that this procedure was going to hurt, but I hadn't expected to have the psychological addition of having my reaction to the pain being exposed.
2nd, he checked the tendon repair. It was interesting to watch his face; what he saw left him puzzled. I can still not lift my middle finger all the way up to straight. So, the repair was not entirely (or mostly) successful. He apologized. He doesn't understand why, with 8 stiches, it doesn't appear to have held. He took me to look at a diagram of the hand tendons, because he would also have expected the webbing between the fingers to have helped my ring finger lift my middle finger. And it isn't. So what's going on (or not happening) isn't clear but right now it doesn't work properly. We'll need to consider whether another surgery is warranted. But not now. Need to heal and do some OT and see where I am in a couple months. (Again, so much for a single surgical process that would address everything!)
3rd, he looked at the donor site. He agreed that it wasn't healing as expected. Again, he apologized. Sadly, other than suggesting that I dab it with vinegar (!) or hydrogen peroxide, which might help dry it up, he didn't have much to offer, other than t continue to be patient (although some might argue I lost my patience a while ago). It is healing, even if it doesn't look like it, just slowly. Easy for him to say, obviously, since he's not the one trying to put a skirt on over it and venture out to professional - or social - functions.
What is most amazing, though, is that -- with the staples removed -- the pain in my arm is close to gone. (I would note that in August, when I had the first graft, that she did without staples, the graft site on my arm never hurt much.) But what's more interesting is that the pain at the donor site seems slightly less, too, even though nothing happened to make it better this morning. So, my new theory is that the mind game of pain is that pain is not additive; rather, it's geometric. All of which is good, and means (I hope) that I can back off the stronger pain meds.
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