Monday 16th April.
Today we had another visit to the hospital, we were due to have the appointment at 2pm, but they rang earlier and asked if we could come in straight away as the consultant had assumed that the fracture clinic was staffed all day whereas it wasn't.
We rushed in getting our second use of the wheelchair that we had to hire. Still dead awkward getting him in and out of the car again simply because of the weight of the cast. The visit was short but painful for Joe and this time I managed to brig myself to have a look at the injury and what they've done.
1. The hole where the bone came through; that's doing very well with a series of tears all healing and stitched together, the appearance is that the scarring from that looks as though it's going to be minimal.
2. The hole where the skin tore; that was pretty gruesome. It's stitched and connected at both ends, but there's a gaping great hole about the size of a "Two'sy" marble and depth of a normal marble maybe a little deeper, this is open and raw. Talking to the consultant, he said that it's not muscle tissue damage it's fat tissue and that over a period of weeks the body will grow the fat tissue back again. Of the two injuries it looks like this cut is the one that will scar the most. He said that they had considered skin grafts and plastic surgery, but he said they're pretty certain the body will repair itself and this should be fine in the longer term.
Once all the dressing had been done he was back to normal 'None pain' status withing a matter of minutes and on returning home Michelle noticed that the anti-biotics have nearly run their course. The next visit will be to the local clinic and a normal nurse will dress the wound as it's now deemed to be in a good state of recovery. The following visit will be with the consultant at the hospital on Friday and then they'll decide what the next step is.
The Cast; There's no news on the cast and he's still going to have to struggle with the massive cast which makes it really awkward and difficult to get about, but every day he becomes more confident with it, so maybe on Wednesday, Michelle will be able to get to the local clinic on her own? We'll have to wait and see. So all in all things look like they're going in the right direction.
