Thursday, June 21, 2007

Lizzied again

Back from hospital with my new lizzie attached. I managed to get away with just over a week in hospital which is impressive bearing in mind what they did and the fact that I was "on the table" for 12 hours for the operation.
Lots of interesting new things to learn about from this process.
Because there wasn't enough flesh around the original break site I had to have a free flap taken from my right thigh and plumbed into my left leg using micro-surgery. The donor site was then stapled up and a skin graft applied, also from my right thigh. The flap is very delicate at first so I had 3 days in a sweat box - well a side ward with all the heating on and a strange heater called a "Bear Hugger" to pump hot air around the leg. It looks a bit like someone has attached a flesh coloured tennis ball to my leg, but 2 weeks on it still seems to be OK. The graft sites are also settling down now two (I had a second skin graft from my left thigh onto the wound on the back of my leg to help close it up).
The bones were chistled out again, straightened up and packed out with bone from my pelvis and some clever "pixie dust" that stimulates the healing. The donor site for the bone is certainly the most painful bit right now but even that is getting much better.
I've two appointments next week, one each for plastics and orthopeadics. The plastics is mainly to change the dressings and probably remove the staples, whilst at the ortho clinic I think they want to take another 5% out of the angle of my foot, presumably using the lizzie nuts and bolts - sounds painful but let's wait and see.
Walking is difficult even on crutches and I keep falling asleep so I guess I've a bit more recovering to do.