Saturday, February 12, 2011

It's been a few months

It's been a while guys!

So my new skin on the left side did finally heal in December, which I'm not sure if I posted.

I've been working on getting back into shape for the last month so far it's been great!

However I noticed tonight I have a new OPEN lump on my new skin. I'm assuming that I didn't notice it before it was open because my skin is numb there so I don't really feel a LOT of pain. The pain that I did feel I thought was just the skin graft stretching because of the new exercise.... guess I should have looked sooner...

Hopefully I get in with the doctor soon and we will see how it goes.... Until then I'm going to keep exercising because I don't feel pain... although I'm sure that will make it worse... but we will see.

Hope everyone is doing okay!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Second Surgery and updates (will add more pictures when I find my camera)

As a lot of you know my first surgery with skin grafting was a success! I can move my arm 100% still and no sign of returning H.S as of yet.  It still doesn't look like a regular armpit but it's getting better and the most important thing is that it does NOT hurt!

Some pics from the second surgery

From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
This is right before I got my staples out so around day 21

From Hidradenitis Suppurativa
This was the second day in the hospital before the Tegaderm broke open and made a mess :-/


The second surgery was on September 20th. Again I was in the hospital for 5 days and had home nursing for 4 weeks. Everything about this surgery was backwards from the first one. This time my arm was causing me the most pain! My donor site did not hurt much at all after the first few days. So awesome that I did not have the "my leg is on fire!!" feeling!  

There was a smaller area on this graft that did not take it was about 3cm in diameter that did not take, which is great compared to last time.

However, I do not have full range of motion and probably never will. It's about 92% which isn't bad and I can live with that. Considering I had almost 0 before the surgery. 

So after 6 weeks the small spot that was open healed very nicely.  Everything was great for 2 weeks nothing hurt at all. Now my graft split open where the small area was before, except it is bigger now. An area at the back of the graft split open and an area that covers almost the whole bottom edge of the graft has split open.  It is very painful and sort of just like it was before I had the surgery. I see the surgeon on Tuesday and we will see what she says then.

Thanks for all the emails!