7/18/2008

Good morning.
So Carol finally went down to have surgery at about 7 pm last night. The plan was to start on the legs and move onto the the arms and abdomen after that as time permitted and depending how Carol was doing.

She was brought back up to her room at about 10:30. All the plastic surgery team got to last night were her legs. The necrosis was pretty extensive, and tedious, and they ran out of alloderm (grafting material) just on the legs. The plan is to resume unroofing the areas on her arms and abdomen on Sunday, and maybe not graft them right away, but leave them exposed and then directly skin graft from Carol a little bit later.

Physical therapy continues each day, although I am sure her legs will get a break today. If Carol can tolerate it, we will explore doing the MRI again today. A physchiatris will be coming in the next couple days also.

I have gotten the ball rolling as far as with Swedish's rehab unit. Even though we are a ways off of that, maybe I have said this, but I think having the end game mapped out a bit even now, would be a good idea. We and the hospital are still planning on moving her to harborview for the rehab. That will be much later. She has many of these grafting procedures to go through. Many people have been asking about a time line for her at the hospital. No one will give me straight answer, but it's obviously dependant on her wound healing. The worse wound is her C-section according to the plastic surgeon. He feel that will take a couple months to heal. So I am figuring she will be at Swedish for at least a couple more months.

scott