Doing Well and In Surgery

Heather had a great day yesterday. She seemed to be feeling better than she has felt in a long time. She was able to sleep well through the night again, which is wonderful. She seemed really tired this morning, but was able to work with the physical therapist to do a little exercise. Her muscles are very weak, but she seems willing and motivated to work hard.

She was scheduled to go into surgery at 1:30pm today, but they changed the schedule and she is currently in surgery. She went in at about 10:30am and should be in there for about an hour. As I explained in an earlier post, they will clean out all of her wounds and make sure they have gotten all of the dead and infected tissue. They will then cover the wounds with cadaver skin. They use the cadaver skin because skin is excellent at keeping bacteria and infection out while keeping the undertissue moist (I guess it is no big surprise that skin does the best job at doing what skin does.). She will probably go back into surgery on Monday or Tuesday to have the cadaver skin taken off and her own skin put on. They said that they will take her own skin from her flanks and/or back. They said that the donor sites hurt worse than the wound sites for most people and that the wound sites actually tend to feel better once your own skin is placed on them.