Day 368. Get The Party Poppers Out – Happy Birthday Scar!

So who made a cake? Anyone want a balloon? That’s right, two days ago (I know, I’m late writing this…) was the 1 year anniversary since my accident. Boy oh boy, what a year it’s been. There have been some crazy highs and lows over all aspects of my life, just like everybody else’s. I  didn’t go to Paris but instead went on an incredible tour around Italy. I left one career but started another. I lost loved ones but gained more loved ones. And even though it’s not over yet, it’s certainly getting there. I have stopped wearing my splint at night which is a wonderful feeling of achievement but still have to wear my glove for another 18 months or so as it takes the scar 2 years from the last surgery to fully mature. The moisturising continues and probably always will but hey, it gives me something to do when I’m sitting bored in a lecture or waiting for my food to cook. So say happy birthday!

The photo on the right shows my slightly bent ring finger that will probably stay bent like that from now on which is a bit of a bummer but hey ho. My little finger sits away at a bit of a funny lookin’ angle (which might be totally normal and I just might have a weird hand…) and my ring finger looks like I’ve been sat in the bath for too long but apart from that, I can’t complain! Hopefully when my glove comes off, my fingers will regain a bit of chunkiness. At least by having to moisturise multiple times a day, I’ll have younger hands when the rest of me gets old and wrinkly! Which has worryingly already begun…

 

And just an end note, a close friend of mine sent me this video. If you feel a little deflated and need a bit of a lift, just spend 3 minutes and 28 seconds sipping a nice cup of tea, eating a biscuit and watching this:

 

Day 279. Scarring update.

So, plodding along as usual! Just a quick update;

Movement in my fingers is so much better, almost back to normal. They are still stiff and feel like they need a good oil but I guess that they will improve in time. They are all continuing to be straight except for my worst damaged one – my ringer finger – which is ever so slightly bent on the top joint. But apart from that, the pressure glove, moisturising and splint are doing a good job! Take a look:

 

Right hand is also there to show the comparison. Fingers are still pretty thin and ET-lookin’ but when I finally stop wearing the glove, I’m hoping that they’ll fatten out again.

I owe these guys my hand.

So these cool kids are the reason my hand is looking so awesome. My surgeon Mr Rauf, my occupational therapist Liz (both from Leicester Royal Infirmary) and my mother in the bottom left. There is also the whole Burns Unit at Leicester Royal Infirmary during my first couple of weeks and my incredible physiotherapist Kate but I haven’t got a photo of her… I am very blessed to have had such incredible individuals help me. My mother cleaned my hand every day in the weeks leading up to my surgery which I think was about as painful for her as it was for me. Without her doing such a good job, my hand could have easily become infected and things could have turned out a lot worse for me. Mr Rauf needs no explaining on how he has helped me, despite sending me home with turmeric and honey pasted all over my healing scars. Kate is the reason I can carry on using my hand to it’s full extent and gives wonderful hand massages. And finally Liz who is the reason my scar is becoming barely noticeable, my fingers are staying wonderfully straight and I keep getting given funky gloves. I think I will have to high-five them next time I see them. Thank you guys, so much. xxxx

Day 240. Wanna see something really gross?

Here are some of the photos my surgeon just sent me of my skin graft surgery. If you don’t like gore, then don’t look!!

 

First of all, if you remember way back to how my hand looked before surgery, you can see that whilst I was zonked out, they scrubbed all of that fat off so I had just the raw flesh.

 

Here you can see where my skin was taken from my foot.

 

 

Now it starts to get gross and zombie lookin’. They must have cut off my blood supply or something because my hand should not be that colour… Oh yeah, and see that thing in the bottom left? Yep. That’s my foot skin.

 

New skin is attached and blood starts to return to my hand.

 

 

 

If you vomited during this post, I do apologise. But hey, almost 8 months later and it’s looking pretty good!

 

 

Day 194. Sprints and splints.

Well the Olympics are over and the UK seems to be having withdrawal symptoms. I am very proud of my country for doing so well in the medals table and boy oh boy do we know how to put on a good closing ceremony.

 

So it’s been a couple of weeks since I had my stitches out and my hand is feeling so much better. It’s pretty much straight for a start! But the scarring feels no where near as tight as it did before. It’s such an awesome feeling being able to have that movement back, you have no idea. I’ve nearly regained my bending back but not fully just yet. Also, I think it looks pretty good! Especially in comparison to how it looked back on day 100. But yeah, take a look:

 

You can see in the first picture that my ring finger is still slightly bent at the tip. It’s not too bad and I can kind of flatten it but to help it along, I’ve been given this cute miniature splint that I have to wear for 4 hours throughout the day, then my full finger splint at night.

 

Like I said, pretty cute. But not as cute as a cat with it’s face in a slice of bread…

Day 176. Sharks and stitches.

So after having my appointment rescheduled for 5 days later, Monday finally rolled around. If waking up an hour and a half late and still catching the bus was an Olympic sport, I would have won gold. But as it’s not, I was just happy to get to my appointment on time. The bandages took a good 5 minutes to cut open before I was able to see what wonders cosmetic surgery can do. I’ll admit, I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew that I was going to be zig-zaggy but that was about it. Well anyway, let’s cut to the chase:

Y’know, I think that after you get knocked out for surgery, they wheel you into theatre where a number of grannies are ready with their sewing machines and cross-stitch needles and after the surgeon does a a couple of zig-zag cuts, the grannies plonk your hand onto their machine and give it a couple of runs through whilst listening to Take That on their analogue radio. After 10 minutes of unpicking, tugging and general squirming from my part, all the 48 stitches were out and it looked something like the 2nd picture above. The first thing I noticed was how straight my fingers were now – I flattened my hand onto the table so much easier than before the operation. I also noticed that a thick lump of scar tissue that used to be on the webbing of my ring finger and my little finger was now gone. I then remembered about my note I had left on my hand to remind me to take the bins out for the bin collection. Whoops…

So now the physiotherapy and occupational therapy starts over again. Once the wounds have fully healed and the scarring fades, my hand should look a lot better than it did before the z-plasties. But for now, I shall continue to tell people that I had a fight with a shark and won..

Day 165. Ice-cream and granny slippers.

Well I reckon I was in some NHS fast-track operation list because I was in and out of hospital within 27 hours which is pretty good going. I got given my very flattering blue gown ad tight socks to put on and within a couple of hours I was plodding down the corridor to theatre in my £5 Asda granny slippers. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in recovery. Turns out I’m allergic to penicillin which was news to me but a bit of a panic for them. The operation took around 2 hours and I get my stitches taken out on Wednesday so I am looking forward to seeing my new cosmetic surgery job! (Although, I don’t think it will be as exciting as taking bandages off after a nose job…).

For the first 5 hours or so after waking up, I couldn’t feel my hand at all as they had used local anaesthetic on it (as well as having me under general anaesthetic) which was a bit freaky – like when you’ve fallen asleep with your arm under you. But the pain isn’t as bad as when I had my first operation – just a bit of throbbing and aching. I told my folks that my throat was pretty dry and was struggling to eat properly so being the awesome parents they are, they bought me a huge tub of ice-cream. Man, after not eating for 13hours it was so good. Over the night I was woken up by my lovely friend Bhav who was working a night shift at the hospital, woken up to be given more drugs and woken up by the loudest mouth breathing human I think I’ve ever heard. I thought I was in some kind of wind tunnel and I was in danger of being sucked into that thing at any moment. But apart from that, I slept well and was discharged from the hospital shortly after breakfast. So now we wait until Wednesday to see if my hand looks like a cosmetic surgery job that Jordan would be proud of or if it looks like I just high-fived Edward Scissorhands…

Day 162. X, Y, Z-Plasty

So today rolled around pretty slowly as I was desperate to know if I needed to have a 2nd operation called a Z-Plasty. My fingers are still pretty claw-like so I had an inkling that I might need the 2nd operation. So sitting opposite my surgeon as he had a good look and prod at my hand, I waited for his verdict. “Yep. That’s going to need some work doing to it…” he said. Okay, I was cool with that. “…so I’ve booked you in for this Thursday.” Sorry, this Thursday?? As in, 2 days time? I wasn’t so cool with that. I was planning on driving my lovely newly painted car around for the next couple of weeks and doing lots of productive Uni work. But now I’m going to be spending 36 hours in hospital and then a week bandaged up! At least it would be a chance to get stuck into my awesome book. Anyway, my surgeon continued to draw all over my hands in the places I would have my Z-plasties.

He will cut 6 Z-plasties which should take about 2 hours. 2 hours just to make a few cuts seemed a bit over the top to me, but hey ho. This type of surgery is under the ‘Cosmetic Surgery’ category. So am I meant to come out of theatre on Thursday with all my wrinkles gone and boobs 3 times bigger? No? Oh, okay.

 

EDIT: To see photos after the z-plasty procedure, click here.

Katie Piper

A lot of people will have heard of Katie Piper or seen one of her TV documentaries but I just thought I would post a link to her website - http://www.katiepiperfoundation.org.uk/ 

The Katie Piper Foundation was set up as support site for burn victims with information, forums and donations. This lass is an incredible woman. Just read her story and you will understand why. If you’ve got a couple of quid spare, chuck it in her donation tin. Virtually, anyway.

Day 100. Hours, minutes, seconds.

So, it has been 100 days since my accident. Or 2400 hours. Or 144,000 minutes. Or 8,640,000 seconds. But, 100 days will do. In that time, I have taken 540 pills, spent 855 minutes massaging my hand and had 25 hospital appointments. Oh, and celebrated my 21st birthday! And after all of that, today, my hand looks like this:

 

But it is not yet finished! I still have to go to physio and occupational therapy, but only every other week. I will hopefully be getting a second glove next week with web spacers on too as the webbing between my ring finger and little finger is getting rather chunky. I still can’t fully straighten my ring finger at the tip which can be a pain, but more occupational therapy will hopefully sort that out. If not, there is always surgery, but let’s not talk about that yet.

All in all, it’s going pretty good. All I need to do now is get the 3 months of university work finished and I will be a very happy woman.