The Incision

There are pictures linked in this post, feel free to skip the reading and go straight to the images if you like :)

Four days after surgery, the surgeon came in and removed the dressing covering my incision and the wound drains. (tangent: Wound drains are weird things! They are long tubes sticking out of the incision and attached to little bellows-like boxes that collect all the goo that would otherwise back-up under my skin or mean changing bandages a whole lot more. Even after my catheter came out I had the wound drains for a day or two longer. Because they came detached in several places fairly easily, it was like having a pair of Eeyore tails while trying to get around my hospital room.) My redhead skin was unbelievably sensitive. Literally, unbelievable as far as the surgeon was concerned. He kept saying "I'm just pulling up tape, this shouldn't hurt, I'm not touching anything." The nurse who had seen my skin after the last IV replacement believed me when I cried out and tried to explain it to the surgeon, but to not much avail.

I'm really really glad Max was there in person for this procedure, I know I would have completly fallen apart without him there to hold me and keep me focused. Let me just say it's a damn good thing my doc went into surgery rather than gynocology. At least most of the time his patients are unconscious so it doesn't matter if he warns us about when he's going to touch something sensitive. After the stress of the bandage removal, I was really nervous about the wound drain removal. Having them removed was a tickley sensation, but didn't actually hurt.

Here are two pictures of what the incision looked like right after the bandage removal. The first is a wider shot and a little easier to look at if you squick easily. This second one is more upclose for my detail oriented readers.

You'll notice there are a couple bandages at the base still. Those were there to catch what was left from the wound drains and came off a couple days later (Russell was there for the next round of bandage removal, but neither Russell nor Max were there for the final removal on day 6. It wasn't pretty and I think the surgeon felt kind of bad afterwards. That was a really rough morning.)

I don't have any x-rays to show you just yet, but here is a before/after shot of the outside of my back. Don't click if you don't want to see ouchies on my back! It's behind a link because the before was taken after a pretty intense single-tail scene with Max and my bare butt is featured. Look at my waistline on the right side to see the really dramatic change in my body shape. I'm "standing up straight" in both pictures.