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#21
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10-20-2018, 03:50 AM
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 My Rank: PRIVATE FIRST CLASS Poster Rank:3558 Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 97 Mentioned: 0 Post(s) Quoted: 4 Post(s)
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Re: Didn't Have a Leg to Stand on
Thank you for sharing. Why is it an open wound like that? Don't they usually leave a flap of muscle and skin to cover the end? Did they have to do a couple of different procedures before it was complete? How is your stump now? My boyfriend is an amputee as well, so I am curious.
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#22
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10-21-2018, 08:02 AM
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| My Rank: PRIVATE FIRST CLASS Poster Rank:3527 Join Date: May 2018 Posts: 99 Mentioned: 1 Post(s) Quoted: 29 Post(s)
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Re: Didn't Have a Leg to Stand on
The cut-off end was there for a couple of weeks--they were trying to save as much below the knee as possible, so for almost two weeks I would spend a day in the hyperbaric chamber, then the next day in the OR. I wasn't allowed food during this period--between that and the missing leg, it was a VERY effective weight-loss program.  After they finally got that ugly stump to a sustainable place, then they did three more operations to make a nice flap of muscle and skin, as you describe--that's the 'butt-looking' photo earlier, though the big cleft has mostly gone away.What part is your boyfriend missing? Has it been gone for a while? Is he still having a lot of phantom pain? |
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#25
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10-24-2018, 06:31 PM
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| My Rank: PRIVATE FIRST CLASS Poster Rank:3527 Join Date: May 2018 Posts: 99 Mentioned: 1 Post(s) Quoted: 29 Post(s)
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Re: Didn't Have a Leg to Stand on
They did leave some skin--the skin part is left after amputations (as I understand it; I know a bit about pulmonary and stem-cell transplant but not vascular surgery, except as a heavily drugged patient) for the "revision," which is the stage at which they close things up and wish you good luck. :-) I was actually REALLY lucky--a lot of people might have just had an above-the-knee amputation, which is WAY worse to recover from. But my doctor and her team worked really really hard to save as much leg as they could. Not everybody is that lucky. I was also lucky when I was on a by-demand pump for both dilaudid and ketamine at the same time. Someone didn't allow for the dose of one AND the dose of the other, and I was dead for a little while. Mrs Boudreaux called the nursing station to ask about me because I wasn't answering my cell, and they found me not breathing and blue, and punched my chest for a while. :-/ People TELL you about a bright light and dead relatives beckoning and a feeling of hope. That's crap. You hear scary organ music and backwards chanting in Latin, and there are flames everywhere and the smell of sulphur. Nothing fun about it, honest. |
