April 5, 2010

3rd post op appointment




Today was our last appointment with Dr. Lewin for stage 1. Trey got his hair washed again and Dr. Lewin cleaned up his ear. The skin sheds and needs help clearing out the old skin so you can see the nice new skin underneath. The only area of concern is the lobe, the dark spot but she felt the skin looked better underneath. She thought the dark spot got bigger but I thought it looked a lot better. She was happy that the lobe was only dark in the upper part of it, as long as it isn't black at the bottom it should heal. We will have to keep adding moisture to the ear in that area for awhile until it looks better which we start that in a week. Right now we start daily cleaning of his "normal" ear where the skin graft was taken, this cleaning will help the stitches fall out as well. The ear cup was put back on and will remain on for another week, at that time we get to be the ones to wash his hair and clean the ear. We will take pictures and send them to her. After that we can use the cup if we feel it necessary but she did give us another ear cup that we can use at night to protect the ear. There doesn't seem to much to worry about but there will be work for us to keep it clean and moist. I am sure in a week I will panic because I will have forgotten everything she told us. If we lived in CA we would be having a 4th appointment with her but since we are traveling Dr. Lewin only had us stay in town for 3 follow up appointments. As for seeing the ear, it was the first time I saw Trey head on with his 2 big ears and to be honest it was a little shocking for me. It had nothing to do with how the new ear looks more that he has a big ear where he didn't have one before. I was a little taken aback by my reaction, though I know the more I see it the more it will become normal. I do miss his little ear but I know we did the best thing for him. So glad I got a lot of pictures of him before the surgery, I will always cherish his little ear and so glad I know its still there as his lobe. I think if we lost the lobe I would be crushed. The pictures of Trey's ear were taken before the cleaning, I didn't get a picture of the ear after but it looked a lot better, lots of stitches came out and the uneven color spots of the ear improved. He looks unhappy in the picture because he woke up from napping in the car and was not yet awake. One good thing was Trey got a lot happier at the end of the visit because he got to meet another young boy who just had surgery after Trey and they looked like twins with their Nike caps and ear cups on. I think it was really good for him to see another boy dressed like him. I will post more pictures of his ear once we get some.

I also wanted to write about the arm where she took the skin graft. It is still taped and bandaged, since the skin is tight because so much of it was removed.We will have to keep tape on it for about 4 months. We will keep it wrapped up for as long as possible so he won't take off the tape. I guess the reason for taping it for so long is to help keep the scaring down since the skin is pulled in tight and is pulling away from the scar.

No comments:

Post a Comment