I was at wound care yesterday. I am back to my healing ways--sort of. The good news first: I am pretty much down to a single wound. The wound on my left hip that I developed in the hospital will be healed within a week to ten days. It is very small, half the size of a dime, and obviously almost healed. The other wound I developed on my ass is also healed. This was never a serious issue but could have been. The bad news: the wound on my right, the big problem from the get go is, well, a real problem. And truth be told it was always the major problem. It was a stage four wound, deep, nasty, and grossly infected when discovered. It is slowly getting smaller and has filled in--I have great granulation so I am told. Frankly I think it looks like chop meat--non infected lovely fresh tissue an MD would say. But that is not the issue. I have tunneling or undermining that is not getting any better. This is a huge problem. The MD changed the way we are doing the wound vacuum and hope in three weeks the undermining/tunneling is substantially better. If not, it is flap surgery for me. This surgery is a measure of last resort. Frankly the odds of me healing, that is the undermining/tunneling being better in three weeks are nil. I suspect the three week wait is less about healing and more about scheduling--going to the hospital for surgery between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a very bad idea. Shoot, going to the hospital for any reason between now and New Year day is a bad idea. I speak from experience. Staff does not want to be there, patients do not want to be there or conversely sad people that have no family want to be there. It is a bizarre mix of staff and patients. If humanly possible do not get involved.
I have thought of little else aside from my wound in the last 24 hours. I feel as though I have somehow failed or my body has failed to heal. I have been a model of "patient compliance" and know I am not to blame. I do not sit up often, my sitting is in fact severely limited. I try to bend my hips as little as possible in fact. None of this has done much good. I am worried--deeply worried. Flap surgery I see as a measure of last resort. If it fails I am in deep trouble. I worry not about the routine things that go wrong with surgery--I accept that risk as beyond my control. My worries are what happens if flap surgery fails. At that point I am at the end of the road--meaning I will never sit normally again. It will be just me and these four walls. That will be a hard life for sure. I have already lost the Fall, now the winter, and potentially much more. Of course I know flap surgery is usually successful and I will seek out a top notch plastic surgeon that does this all the time in New York City. The reality is I have no significant risk factors that could hurt me--I am not diabetic, have no circulatory problems nor am I obese. If anything I am too skinny--I weigh a whopping 140 pounds. I am even trying to gain weight without any luck (no more lite beer in the house).
What do I do when worried as I obviously am? Well, I read too much. I have been researching flap surgery and delving into growth attenuation again. The Hastings Center Report I read and wrote about has me wired. I am growing skeptical of the conclusions reached. I wonder what a rigorous informed consent would involve for those parents that would consider such a radical course of treatment that growth attenuation is. My idea of informed consent would render it virtually impossible to go through with growth attenuation. Frankly I don't trust large institutions such as Seattle Children's Hospital. I also have no faith in ethics committees--the sort of committee that already allowed growth attenuation to be performed, illegally as it turned out. Not a minor mistake in my estimation. I am also preparing for my son's return from college (that means ordering huge quantities of food he consumes). Now this makes my heart soar! I miss him very much but know he is learning and becoming an adult. His development is amazing and I am very much the proud poppa! Of course I also know by the time he returns to college for the Spring term I will be happy to see him go. It will not be easy for him or me to coexist. He is nocturnal and I am not. He is 18 and I am, well, old! I have household rules and he rebels--as he should. I know I did and made my parents crazy. I guess the apple does not fall far from the tree.