Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Not what I'd hoped for

Natalie's visit to the surgeon today wasn't what I expected: the surgeon doesn't normally see patients on Tuesdays, but was going to come over after surgery to see Natalie.  But after I arrived, I learned that he was stuck in surgery and wouldn't be coming to see her.  So we saw another surgeon that was in the office.

He took off the steri-strips the ER doctor had put on, and cleaned everything up (lots of singing to Natalie to keep her calm).  Then he said it would heal just the way it was.  The only problem is that now the scar will be more than twice as wide as before.  He put gauze and tape on it and said I could also just put a band-aid on it. When I got home, I realized that now he had removed what was holding the scar together--the steri-strips--the wound could come open again!  Tom and I are not exactly happy with the way this is turning out.

I called the surgeon's office back and asked to keep our Thursday appointment with Natalie's original surgeon (which was supposed to be the 2-week followup after surgery).  I want to ask him to put steri-strips back on to hold the wound closed (I was surprised the surgeon wouldn't put some staples or stitches in the wound, but he called it a "dirty wound" now that it opened, and said they don't touch a dirty wound).

So now we're hyper careful with Natalie pulling up on things, and no school or therapy for the rest of the week.  Thanks for your prayers that this resolves quickly with no more incidents.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh no. I hope nothing else goes wrong. Praying for you all.

The Starks said...

wow, that is weird. What happens with the child that playing in the playground falls and gets a big wound that needs stitches? The stitch it up... this is a very similar case. I pray that you will have a more satisfactory response from her surgeon tomorrow.