I am still walking around with a hole in my leg. It has now seemed like forever, specially with my never ending doctor visits to the Wound Clinic every Monday at 8:30am. What started out as a nasty black infected looking thing was scraped clean to reveal a hole about an inch or so in depth. It was cleaned and packed with collagen and bandaged with what they keep calling a "unaboot". The boot is made up of several layers of bandages and other materials. It is supposed to give me added compression on my leg, where the calf muscle acts as a pump to move water and other drainage away from the cut and out to my kidneys, I guess.
I was going twice a week for about a month, but the hole that started an inch deep has filled in and although it hasn't changed much from last week, I thought it did still change some. This week, the wound had an imprint of the bandages and stuff, same as the skin immediately around it. That tells me that it is filled in and now about the same texture as the "meat" right below the skin. Two weeks ago, the flesh in the hole looked more like jello than "meat". The doctor did say that the wound looks perfect, I am doing all I can, it has not gotten infected, and the flesh is a bright healthy red. He does seem a little surprised that it is taking this long to start showing signs of closing. They changed the material they are packing it with to a higher collagen material, and since it is stayed looking so well through the Thanksgiving week, I can start going only once a week to change the bandages. I like this because I only go once a week, but I do like getting new dressings so I can see what is going on in there.
The doctor did worry me a bit, saying that if it doesn't start showing signs of improving in the next couple of weeks, he might suggest I be sent to a plastic surgeon to look into a skin graft. I don't know what that entails, but it does sound expensive. I asked if that meant they would be taking skin from my butt cheeks or what that entails and the nurse kind of laughed but said no, they grow the skin from stem cells. I am glad ole George W. Bush didn't completely kill stem cell research, otherwise they might be eyeing my fat ass to take some skin.
We shall see where I am in a couple of weeks. I could attach some pics, maybe. Hmm.
What gash looked like initially:
A couple weeks of waiting for it to heal by itself:
When they dug out the hematoma and all the other nasty stuff:
What it looked like Monday morning this week:
Couldn't see pictures.
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