Pain

The third day is almost always the worst. It is almost 3 pm and I am just now getting to where I feel I can sit up and not be just overly exhausted and crying and in pain. My face has swollen worse overnight but I think the pain in my leg is even worse than my face right now. I dont know why it hurts so badly but it does. It feels like a deep burn that wont go away. It is uncomfortable because no matter how I lay it bleeds out the side of the stuff they put over it (looks like seran wrap but has a medical name, I think its Tagaderm?).

I had an appointment this morning and my mom ended up taking me. They said it all looks normal, the amount of bleeding is due to the fact that I am borderline anemic and the large area of skin they took off. They peeled the Tagaderm off and also the gauze they had laid under it to soak up the blood after the surgery, it was so painful I started to scream and my mom started to cry I think from seeing me in so much pain it must have been hard for her. It was dried on in some places and when they pulled it just hurt so badly. They say it will heal fairly quickly, and I am looking forward to that as it causes me the most pain so far (even though my mouth is pretty painful).

Here is a pretty picture from after they changed my leg bandage this morning, they put just the Tagaderm over it and no bandaging under it because after the second day the bandaging really starts to stick and it hurts too much to take off, they say it shouldn't stick to the wound itself:



Nasty huh? After all the crying and numbing they did for me I felt I could chance a look at it and its really not as bad as I expected. It does really look like they took a cheese slicer and just took off an exact rectangle of my skin. They say it wont scar and I can see it now too, it looks like where Ashley fell and scraped the top layers of skin off her elbow.

My biggest issue right now is with my lips chapping and my not eating (I have only sipped on some broth since Wednesday). My lips are so chapped they are swollen and huge and almost stuck together, I have been putting chap stick on them non stop but it doesnt help. I think I am probably partially dehydrated as it is too difficult to get things in my mouth, even a glass of water. Hopefully tomorrow will start the upswing of healing, I just dont remember it being this bad. I really thought this would be a fairly easy surgery but it has turned out to be one of the worst by far as far as pain and healing goes. I'm taking my antibiotics and vicodin on a timely basis (12 pm, 6 pm, 12 am and 6 am for the antibiotics and every 4 hours or so for vicodin though I have been able to go a bit longer today without it).

I'll keep you all updated on my progress, please keep the good thoughts coming as I very much need them.