A skin graft for my birthday

I'll be upfront. I don't enjoy my birthday all that much. It always seems that life goes to shit around my birthday. Maybe because it's on Groundhogs Day that I get to keep repeating bad experiences. I knew there was a good chance this year would follow suit after my less than stellar appointment last week and the fact that they scheduled my follow up on my birthday. I've officially petitioned my Mother to change my birthday to my original due date of April 15th.

Again- scroller beware. These pictures are worse than the other ones so if you have a weak stomach- turn back now.

The morning of my appointment we call in The Village. When they say it takes a village to raise a child no one was kidding. Bee goes to Oma's as she does every Monday to play, drink juice and be a wild banshee of a two year old. Grandma Billie comes over to watch Fox at our house so he can swing gently in his bunny swing, vomit everywhere and look at himself in his play mat mirror without banshee of a two year old trying to pet his head. Nana is waiting in the wings to relieve both of them at 4 pm and await the arrival of her mangled daughter. There are efforts from all three to clean my house, cook me dinner, have Bee make me a birthday card and generally help me have somewhat of a nice day. Ahead of my tragic appointment I jet to lunch with my hubs and my high school friends Kat and Andrew. They decided to come to Arizona for sunshine, to have some fun with me and see a Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl win. We all know how that turned out. Sweet Kat came to get some time away and ends up taking care of me, my dishes and my kids. We're already in talks to make our next get together more spa and less trapped in my house. But at least we got to go have lunch on the patio of Blanco before my appointment and it was so so lovely. I washed down my birthday margarita with a pain pill in anticipation of evil medical assistants touching my foot. They told me to take the pill but the margarita was alllll me.

Here was the foot after they took of the soft cast. Pretty much looks the same as 4 days earlier. The doctor walks in the door. Sighs and says that it looked ok. Just ok. I steeled myself mentally at this point. I knew what was coming. She calls James over to look at it and basically says, it's not going to heal this way and we need the graft.

I gaze at my thigh for the last time looking smooth and whole. They draw a huge bullseye on it. I make sure there are no moles on the skin they plan on transferring. Not at all kidding.

The MA needs to numb my foot because they need to clean the wound and then do the graft. I'm told it will hurt. Like bite down on a piece of leather hurt. She explains the bottom of the foot and the nose are the worst places to do this stuff to. They put some numbing cream around the area they'll be shooting up. I think this is more of a mental placation for me. James takes his position by my shoulder and offers both of his hands for crushing. She pulls out a fistful of needles and begins. It is excruciating. Absolutely excruciating. Its not just the stab of the needle but the medicine burns going in and needs to be massaged out. She starts off in the least tender place on my foot and works around. I don't even remember how many needles she goes through but when she radios for more we take a break. I'm crying and panting. James flexes his mangled hand. We begin again and I begin to debate if this is worse than labor. I'm not sure. At least with the contractions I got a break in between stabs. Finally she's done with my foot and they move to my thigh to numb it. It feels like nothing. I'd take 25 stabs to my thigh over 1 to my foot. Everything is numb and they clean out my foot. All that new growth is stripped away to help the graft take.

They clean it out really well and thank the Lord I can't feel it. They move on to my poor thigh. The doctor comes in and cuts off a chunk of my thigh. The MA then gets it all prepped for transfer. She says that I don't have a lot of fat on my thigh which I find hard to believe after gaining 40 pounds, then not being able to work out for the last 18 months and generally feeling like a flabby couch potato. I can not bring myself to look at my thigh but James stares in rapt fascination at everything. And documents it all of course.

I'm glad I didn't look because that's disgusting. The doctor comes back in and says she thinks she can close the wound. I'm thrilled because they thought it would be too big to close it. She's able to close the wound with stitches which will cut down on my healing time for this wound substantially. A mere 18 stitches later we are done with the thigh. I'm not please to discover later that the stretch marks that used to be located on the outside of my thighs from puberty have been relocated to the front on my thigh. Super.

After the graft is prepped and ready they begin sewing it on my foot. Which takes forever. The number starts to wear off in one area of my foot but there is no way in hell I'm mentioning it. She is not stopping to shoot another fistful of shots into my foot. Hurry it up and lets get this done.

I'm read the riot act about my foot. Do not stand up. Lay down for a week. Do not fall. Keep it elevated. Ice it. Take pain meds. More antibiotics. Keep it elevated. Sigh. And did we tell you to keep it elevated?

And we're done! The graft looks collapsed because it's pressing against the wound so that the veins will connect with it and then let the skin live. It's packed with some sort of solution and then put back into the soft cast for the 5th time. We head home to have birthday dinner and cake. It's all good until the number wears off completely and the pain in intense. So intense I can't stand up and have to take medicine every 4 hours. And I'm shaking with pain at the arrival of the 4 hour mark. I'm so doped I pump and dump everything. James goes back to work and my mom moves in. I'm back to the crutches because the scooter irritates the graft site. I really only go from the bed to the couch to the bathroom and back. I can't be left alone with the kids because I can't lift any of them even the baby. James works Tuesday and Wednesday nights while my Mom runs defense. It's hard to keep everything up and running. Its like having 3 children because all I do is sit. We're so so blessed to have my mom here and willing to come take care of us all and get up with the baby in the middle of the night too. And then work from my house during the days with Bee dancing around her begging for attention. I nominate her for sainthood. Somebody make a notation of that please.

So it's Thursday and I can get away with not taking pain meds all the time. I can be upright without searing pain. Hopefully this means good things. If this graft fails I will lose my mind so prayers that it takes and that I get more than a sigh when the doc checks me out on Monday. We need some good news around here. I'm now convinced I'm not of hardy stock and would die on the Oregon Trail. Probably of a festering wound from a snake bite. We should not decide to go homesteading anytime soon. Or at all.