It may read as though I'm skipping days throught this blog, I'm writing it from a diary my mom kept whilst I was in hospital to keep track of what happened when, for the solicitors.
These were a stressful few days (everyday was but these more so...). On Wednesday the 5th September DAY 18 in hospital, my Vacum dressing was removed from my back (full thickness burn and graft) again. Once again this happened out of nowhere for me as a team of doctors, students and a consultant came into my room and talked about me to eachother while my nurse came in as fast as possible to try and get down what they were doing, so that I would know and so it would also be in my notes! They made me sit forward for this which was marginally better than being rolled but I had to hang on to my nurse to hold myself up and it killed my back, my pelvis, my legs everything. The removal itself hurt a lot, they peeled it off pretty fast but the thing is completley, air and water tight so it sticks pretty hard. They peered at the burn and muttered to themselves that it didnt look good 'here or here' but was probably 80% taken. That means 80% of the skin stapled onto the burn had survived and was doing well. They re-dressed it with a fabric dressing and special pads. They also pulled the dressings off my head, shoulder and hip and left them open for the nurse to try and figure out what they wanted doing with them! That was the first time I had seen my shoulder and hip injuries and they were pretty nasty. They called it 'road damage' or 'road burns' and basically where I had been dragged 10m under a car the tarmac had ripped through my jeans and 100% leather jacket and basically dragged and rubbed big patches of skin off me. My hip skin was hanging off and so was stitched back on and I have large areas of scar tissue which were once essentially gaping holes. The same happened to my head, my helmet was driven over and ripped up at some point and my scalp was rubbed away to my skull on the right side. Hense the hair removal, LUCKILY my hair has grown back through some of the scar tissue on my scalp and so they can cut out the remainder of scar tissue and pull it together to create a straight line scar. Which if you'd seen my head in A&E should be absolutley amazing!
On Friday 7th September my wrist was comfirmed broken. One of the first things I recall when I came out of the coma was telling the nurses my wrist hurt (I couldnt feel my lower body so it didnt hurt at that time) they told me it was probably just a sprain because they had done a full body scan...Nope 3 weeks later it was 100% broken and put in plaster! Meaning I only had one un-damaged are (my left arm).
Monday 10th September was heartbreaking really. It was DAY 23 and I was told I may be able to be transferred to a nearer hospital if I carried on progressing well, I was desperate to go home and really hoping for that. I met Mr VN (Im not sure if Im allowed to use his full name so I wont!) this day, he is a very senior burns and plastics consultant, he's also a wing commander in the army and runs private plastic surgery clinics in london. He had been told about me and wanted to take over as my burns consultant. He looked at my back, didn't order someone else to take off the dressings and actually spoke TO me! Sadly he took one look at my back and was absolutley certain the graft had completley failed and that the wound was becomming extremley infected. He was furious that someone had looked at it and told us it was 80% taken becuase it was 0% taken. They told me I'd have to go straight onto antibiotics, have my back treated everyday and when it was clear repeat the whole skin graft procedure. I was completley devastated I couldnt believe any of this had happened and just wanted to go back and never leave the house that day. I still do.
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