RECOVERING FROM SURGERIES

It is time for an update, its been a little while. I am in the process of recovering from the two surgeries in the last few weeks. The first surgery was to remove the large legion on my leg. The surgery was done by Dr. J Raj who is the chief of plastic surgery at Fairview Hospital. The melanoma site was completely walled off to the rest of my body just as Dr. Buttar had predicted. There was no spreading to any other parts of the leg. Dr. Raj was initially concerned that the tumor had grown onto the tendon of my leg and that could pose a major problem. This was not the case, the surgeon said it could not have gone any better.

The surgery went well, although a much larger chunk of skin was taken than I had anticipated. I had a hole in my leg the size of a softball for about a week. Extremely painful!!!! Dr, Raj told me had I gone through the "traditional" treatment the area would have been at least twice the size. Having an open wound for a week on that part of your body was some of the worst pain I had ever experienced in my life!

After about a week of the wound being open, Dr. Raj went back in and performed a skin graph. The donor site was taken from my right thigh. The doctor compared the graph to a cheese grader. The skin that is taken off of the leg is so thin you can see through it if held up to a light. The wound from the donor site is a 5 by 10 inch rectangle which has a thin piece of gauze as dressing to cover it up and that is it. My right leg where the graph was given is in a half cast just below my knee. I have been totally immobilized since last Wednesday. I was instructed to not move at all. The graphed area is wrapped in a cast, as well as hooked up to a wound vac. The wound vac is a sponge attached to the wound with a tube connected to a little pump. The pump sucks out all of the drainage to expedite the healing process. The doctors and nurses have all raved that this can cut the healing time in half.

The doctor was very happy with the results of the second surgery as well. I have an appointment on Thursday to hopefully remove the splint and the wound vac and get back to some sort of normalcy. I am confidant that the process will continue to go in the direction we had initially anticipated and by Christmas of this year I will be free and clear of this nonsense forever. I am scheduled to go back to Dr. Buttar's clinic in the next month or so and get one last round of the AARSOTA shots as a precaution. He was concerned that any time you cut into something with cancer, it tends to spread. My immune system is back working properly so this will not be an issue but a worthwhile precaution to close out this process.

I will continue to update more in the near future. I have been in a lot of pain and taking a lot of pills ( which I tried to refuse until the pain came on) and have not felt much like typing. I appreciate all of the calls, e mails and texts. If I have not responded I apologize. These last few weeks have been difficult and talking has not been on the top of my list. I want to thank everyone who has been so helpful in the last few weeks. Lots of good food and love have come to the house and that has been a blessing. I want to thank all of my helpers, I am sure I have been a total pain in the ass and I sincerely appreciate all you have done!!!!!!!

Please take some of the information in the previous posts and put it to good use. This year has been totally crazy and I believe had I known what I know now I would not have had to have gone through all of this. Cancer is mostly preventable!!!!! Use the information wisely and don't let this happen to you. The crazy thing is the way I went is most likely much less physically taxing and probably much less painful than the traditional route and this has not been fun!!!!!