Wrap it up, I’ll take it.

The hyperbaric chamber has shown excellent results. I added a photo of my current arm to the Triton Photos. If you take a look at the current arm versus one of the earlier pictures, notice the extreme increased amount of red matter and the healing that has taken place. The pictures are a lot to handle still, so some of you might want to (begin to) take my word. The red substance includes both increased muscle and blood vessels, both of which are great things for the skin grafts to attach. The darker areas are unusuable tissue that has clumped together and "scabbed" over. To be honest, I don't know what they are exacly, but I do know they won't be there after tomorrow morning. The surgery is scheduled for Monday morning and should be the last time we try to cover up the problem.

I learned from one of my doctors that radiation can significantly affect the success of grafts and flaps. Without getting into numbers and percentages, the odds were not that great that the last surgery would be a total success. It was a bit unusual that the flap did so well so far from the blood supply, but…hey, that’s just me…not normal. Discovering that the surgery had a much higher rate for potential failure actually relieved me. I thought it was supposed to be almost bulletproof. Knowing the truth can be a good thing most of the time.

So surgery is Monday. I’m very excited to get this part over with so we can start paying attention to my wrist and hand, which currently are pretty weak and tight. In no way did I indicate I have a limp wrist. As my arm has been healing, it has created some tightness, but my doctor did say he could address some of these issues during surgery. This whole recurrence had been a major process, on so many lev eos.ppppppppppppppppppppppplllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll==========================llllllllllllllll=pooooooooooooo------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (sorry, Clark just woke me up. I fell sleep writing on the couch…what are you gonna do?)

Clark rescued me yesterday from my home imprisonment and we cruised to Lake Gaston (Ashley ran up to Richmond for the night for Whit’s birthday). It’s the first time truly away from home for quite some time. I’m Courtney Love pail and in desperate need of some color. Maybe I’ll grab a little of the sunlight before I’m back in the hospital and home recovery while I have a chance. I’ve been out a little more slowly over the past week, and it really feels good to be out. The graft recovery period is relatively short, especially considering the recovery time from the two previous substantial surgeries. I should be out and about in no time with a pretty creepy arm. Working on that both cosmetically and functionally will take some serious time and energy, but we’ll get through that too.

Thanks for caring, keeping updated, and wishing us the best.

I love you.