Photo Album
by Mahopac Central School
District
This is 2 days post-injury, after the blisters were debrided (cut off). Foot
is very swollen and mildly infected.
I REALLY wish I would have taken a picture of the blisters, they were
about an inch thick and covered the entire bottom of the foot, plus the
toes.
This is 9 days. Note black tissue forming at edges of wound, and white
areas near heel which are the 3rd degree burns. Also note the blisters
on the toes which are more visible now. I think this is when it looked the
worst.
Had to add this for the fun factor. Dog bite and frostbite
together! This is also 9 days into healing. Eric is doing
hyperbaric oxygen therapy 5 days/week at this point to
keep infection away, reduce swelling, and speed healing.
16 days post-injury. The rest of the toes have been debrided and the
big toe is well on its way to healing. The more severely burned areas
have turned black. The black area does not feel like a normal scab- it's
sort of leathery.
Done with hyperbarics.
1 month post-inury. Medial areas have new pink skin and black areas
are slowly receding. Lateral edge (near the outside edge of black
tissue) is irritated and red, might be mildly infected since he d/c
antibiotics last week.
Note my little Shizzy dog in the background!
5 weeks. You can see the black areas sloooooowly receding and being
replaced first by the red granulation tissue, which is the immature skin
cells, then eventually layers of pink normal skin build on top of that. The
black area is starting to look drier and crispier (for lack of a better term).
Hopefully that means that it's thinning out because viable skin
underneath is pushing it out.
Close-up shot taken by Jacob at 5 wks.. It really does look
like something that got left on the barbecue a bit too long.
6 weeks and 2 days. Note the upper black section has been removed
by Dr.... good granulation tissue underneath, hooray! Bottom black part
is not doing much and Dr. said this week to re-think skin graft.
7 weeks. Note how the black area at the bottom is starting to narrow
and turn yellow at the sides, good! Since this was the most severe
area, it's really encouraging to see it making progress on its own.
7 weeks again, you can really see how much tissue has
completely healed in this one. The whole pink area was
burn.
8 weeks. Wound care Dr. removed a lot of the black scabby
stuff today- that is the yellow sloughy areas you see.
8 weeks. Believe it or not, this is progress.
8 wks. Yes, this is what you think it is. Eric got so attached
to his scabs that he brought them home in a specimen cup.
(the knife is for size comparison- we didn't do a home job)
10 wks. Foot is inflamed and red because Eric decided he
should walk on it for a day since he's going to have surgery
anyway, right ? Wrong.... Yellow areas are fat, red is
granulation tissue.
10 wks- at this angle you can really see how much tissue
has completely healed. The remaining tissue is progressing
very slowly compared to the rest of the foot and the toes,
since deeper layers of tissue were damaged.
This is the donor site on Eric's Thigh, it is 7 inches long. It
looks shiny cause it's covered in a plastic bandage
wide shot of thigh
Foot is splinted for 1 week- surgeon will take it off next
Monday and see if the graft is taking.
6 days post-graft. Gauze pads were stapled TO the foothow rude!! This is the gauze/staple-removing process.
Now removing about half of the staples that attach the graft
to the foot. Other half will come out next week.
And here's the glorious graft, looking like a good graft
should. Big fat sigh of relief.
Eric's very sexy leg. His skin started reacting to the
adhesive and is all welted up around the donor site.
Extreme close-up of the extreme foot makeover. (for those of you who
desire more detail)
The criss-cross pattern is the skin- it gets run through a press-type
machine that stamps it into the mesh pattern. This gives the skin the
ability to drain out blood from underneath, increasin the chances of
adhesion
19 days post op- WE HAVE SKIN !! Note the area to the
right (top of the wound) where it appears white. This is a
thin layer of skin, hooray yippee!
19 days post op again, heel area. The little islands of white puffy tissue
are more skin!! The little red buds are granulation tissue which are the
buds which skin cells will proliferate from. Black around the edges is
normal- just dead skin where the surgery was cauterized.
21 days. Started using an herbal wound salve and a wheatgrass juice
spray extract directly on the wound the day before. The difference in
the amount of pink skin is pretty amazing when you compare this to the
previous picture 2 days ago.
25 days. continue to use herbals and Eric has done 2 hyperbaric dives.
There is now more mature pink epithelium than there is immature red
granulation tissue, and the black dead skin around the edges of the
wound is falling off.
25 days. Look how much the really deep indented area has
healed here compared to 4 days ago, and when you
compare it to the photo at 19 days it's freakin amazing!
31 days. Love that pretty pink skin.
31 days. That deep area mid-foot is going to be the last to
heal, it still has a bit of tissue to fill in.
7 wks post-op. So close! The remaining areas are pretty
shallow. Have follow up appt with the surgeon in 2 days to
see if Eric can start bearing full weight on it again.
Eric's favorite hyperbaric chamber.
Fasten your seat belt...sorta looks like the beginning of
Space Mountain