My burns and the struggles I"ve faced with my leg - Pt. 3

Went today for a follow up at the hospital. Everything is looking really good and skin graft surgery is going ahead as planned. Surgery will be Friday, April 17th at 10am.

I spoke with the doctor about how soon after this surgery I should be able to go home. She said about 2 1/2 to 3 weeks. That puts me into the first week of May.

With all the advancements in skin graft I really thought they would have used some other form of skin rather then taking it directly off my body. Like what the hell - haven't I gone through enough already. LOL. From what I was told they will be taking skin from my upper thigh from either one or both of my legs.

The last time I had any skin graft done was back in the late 70s early 80s.. I was going to be starting high school. They did the graft this time from my belly button around to my spine on my left side. They used over 3000 stitches internally and externally. The purpose of this skin graft surgery was to allow greater flexibility for breathing and growth.

The graft at this point was taking from the same location they are taking it this time. But there is a difference. Last time the graft area was covered with a material that would need to be peeled off. Typically they used silver-nitrate to pure over the graft covered area to moisten it. Then they would slowly, but painfully start peeling this wet, stuck to the skin material off your body. Now we're not talking the same as taking duck tape off your skin. This is more like taking a knife and slicing into the skin about 1/100th of an inch. Then pulling up, away from the body kind of peeling. Yes it can seem to hurt that badly.

The best of my understanding now they use a plastic film kind of thing. That film covers the graft area but does leak so they patch the leaks. This keeps the area clean and dry and helps promote healing. I'll get more information on this later and post it here with some links. Seems pretty interesting.