Drea2up's blog: "My Poetry and other things I've written"

created on 05/19/2007 | http://fubar.com/my-poetry-and-other-things-i-ve-written/b84102

posted on 04/01/2008&nbs-07:00;@&nbs-07:00;07:04&nbs-07:00;pm

Post Op recovery report
http://fubar.com/post-op-recovery-report/b84102-714581

Today I got the plaster splint off my arm. Goddess what a relief that was. It was squeezing my swollen flesh so badly I was in tears last night... I had surgery a week ago to screw a titanium plate into my shattered wrist. It's a T shaped plate, with the top of the T across my wrist and the leg of the T screwed into my radius bone. The Doc had to make a 6 inch incision on the inside of my arm and a 3 inch one on the top/outside of my arm. The post op report says it was a challenging repair. It's been a challenging month, let me tell you! Three weeks went by before the Doc decided I needed surgery... His report says "Even with good volar (palm side of forearm) exposure and elevator in the fracture site all the way to the dorsal (back side of the arm) extent of the fracture, it was not possible to achieve acceptable reduction. Therefore, it was necessary to perform a dorsal approach as well. In other words he had to open up both sides of my arm to successfully affix the plate. He goes on to say "An effort was made not to completely separate the multiple fracture fragments. Reduction was achieved with some difficulty. A fixed-angle volar plate was used with multiple distal pegs to provide the best support for her severely comminuted (bone shattered into many fragments) articular (joint) fracture. The plate was sutured with the shaft of the radius with 3.5-mm screws and distally multiple divergent fixed-angle pegs were placed. Multiplanar fluoroscopy confirmed accurate fracture reduction and hardware placement." I noticed on the x ray, he used 7 pegs ~ my lucky number...and a sacred number. After the splint was removed today the Doc took a look at it and said it's looking good and to just leave the steri strips over the incisions alone and they will come off on their own in a few days. After he left, the nurse came in and sarted to tear the steri strips off. Well you can see in the photo that the incision looks good but there are ugly blood blisters all along the outer edges of the strips. She started to pull on one and I kicked her reflexly in the foot with my foot as I said "no" and pushed her away with my good hand! LOL! I told her the Doc said leave them, can't you see that's blood and I pointed to the bleeding she had started. HA! She was just trying to clean it up she said. I said well if you look you'll see my skin is as thin as paper and will come right off with the tape so lets just leave it. She will be real happy to see me again! LOL! Now I rest and heal for two more weeks, in a removable adjustable splint, then I'll begin physical therapy...