Major Surgery

I’ve been dealing with a chronic open wound since my original accident in 1999 at the age of six. They’ve tried multiple techniques in the last 20 years to try and fix the problem. Some worked partially, others only helped for a couple of months at a time, and others just created problems of their own or completely failed all together.

In the last two years, the wound has been opening up more frequently and gotten deeper in nature. Around the end of 2018, my doctor informed me that the my skull was exposed. He said that if the wound continued to open up that deeply, that our traditional way of dealing with it wasn’t going to be enough—that I’d require a major procedure that involved them taking blood vessel(s) and muscle from somewhere on my body and move it to the open wound. Now, I personally like my muscles and blood vessels and what have you where God put them. Hence, I just ignored him and hoped the surgery he just finished performing would be a success.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go my way and not long after that surgery the wound opened up again. In 2019 alone I had 5 surgeries to attempt to fix the problem. The last round was a three step procedure that happened over the course of about 6 weeks. Both my doctor and I agreed that this would be the last attempt to do the minor procedures and what we considered as the usual, before attempting the major surgery—I even got a second opinion from the doctor who would perform the major procedure if it came down to it and he agreed with us, we’d give it one last try before committing to the surgery I desperately didn’t want.

The first two surgeries went great. My doc placed something called integra each time—it’s meant to promote new tissue growth. The last procedure, as a burn patient, is something I’m far too familiar with, a split thickness graft. He did that surgery December 30th. I was anxious and excited all at the same time. I honestly believed this was it. I was done and I was going to start off the year 2020 on the road to a full recovery—that finally that chapter of my life was coming to an end or at least a pause.

I went to my first post-op visit and things were looking good. Everyone seemed hopeful. I was set to go back in 4 days for my second appointment. Sadly, during that time I could already feel things weren’t right. My pain was increasing and the headache I usually have when I have the open wound was gradually coming back. I wasn’t allowed take off the bandage during this time, but I knew something wasn’t right. January 7th quickly rolled around and my suspicions were right. I didn’t see my doctor that day, but the fact the resident and nurse both wouldn’t give me a straight answer kind of said it all. I was told my doc would call to discuss the plan going forward.

Honestly, that told me everything I needed to know. The bad feeling I had for days was confirmed. My doc’s phone call the next day simply put the final nail in coffin. He told me that looking at the pictures he got from the nurse and resident that the graft had about 90 or so percent failed. I naively asked, “Where do we go from here?” as if I didn’t know the answer already.

He said what we had discussed months earlier, “Free flap procedure.” The only difference from when we originally discussed this route, I was told since he couldn’t do the surgery himself that I would have the surgery done by two of the surgeons in the burn unit that could do it, one of which I’ve met already. He told me that despite one of those surgeons performing the procedure he would make sure he was there. That made me feel tremendously better, because the surgery itself sounded scary but the idea of having surgery done by some guys I don’t know. That sounded terrifying.

Since then, I’ve met with my doc a few times and with one of the other surgeons once. I got a CT scan done so they have a clear image of my blood vessels for them to know what they’re working with. They have everything they need to come up with a game plan before the surgery date.

From my understandings, it’s going to require three surgeons: my doctor and 2 surgeons that do microsurgery which is what’s needed for the free flap procedure. It’s going to be a 6-8 hours long surgery. I’ll have a minimum of a 4-5 hospital stay to ensure everything is healing properly. Then about 2 weeks after the major procedure date, they’ll be doing a final skin graft.

I’m terrified as heck, but so ready for this to be done with. I’m currently in constant pain even though I’m on pain meds. I’m tired of the hospital visits, surgeries, wound dressings, etc. I’m beyond ready. My surgery is set for around March 23rd. That’s the earliest it can be done since they need to coordinate 3 surgeons’ schedules and they have to ensure they’ll be here for a period of time after the surgery is complete. That way even once I’m discharged from the hospital, they’ll be around if something goes wrong. I finally see a light at the end of tunnel—I’m just trying to pass through it in one piece.