Friday, July 17, 2009

Suture removal - a reminder of how far we've come

Thursday July 16, 2009: We were all looking forward to the 3:00 pm appointment at VGH to have the remainder of Tesfaye's sutures removed. Tesfaye was also looking forward to his noon haircut with Karen at Sweet Pea. Tesfaye came on May 20 with very close cropped hair, but it was now around two months since he last had his hair cut (not counting the snipping Stephi did one day in the hospital to get some glue out of his hair where the electrodes were attached).

So at 3:00 pm I met Tesfaye, Haley and Nanci at the hospital for our suture removal appointment with Lise. This was Tesfaye's first return visit to VGH since coming home last Friday, and it would be interesting to see everybody's reaction. Well, everybody thought Tesfaye looked terrific and that his face appeared to have filled out a lot over the last six days; his voice was also noticeably stronger; by the way, it was also a great haircut. We first bumped into pain specialist Doctor Mike Negreaff and discussed Tesfaye's pill regime and told him that Tesfaye had stopped taking the strong pain killer hydramorphone. Doctor Mike told him what other pills he could also start modifying accordingly.

Lise then found a room she could use to remove Tesfaye's sutures. After having Tesfaye sit on a raised bed with his back to her, Lise then began the somewhat time-consuming process. She removed around 25 of the blue sutures, and then found another couple of them that eluded her the first go around. There were also another 25 or so sutures that had been removed two weeks earlier from the upper portion of his incision. The incision, which probably measures 18 inches or so and extends down virtually the whole length of his back, has healed very well. I took pictures of it so that Tesfaye could see how it looked. Looking at him both sitting and standing there with his shirt off and remembering what his back looked like before the surgery, it really was truly amazing to behold and hard to believe just how straight his back is now. With the stitches now out, even though it was probably unnecessary, Tesfaye wanted the area to be re-bandaged with some small strips and Lise did a precision job of doing so. In the process of saying our good byes on the way out we bumped into John the OT, and he also was duly impressed with Tesfayes marked improvement since coming home. As his voice was also significantly stronger we talked about moving up the time when the swallow restrictions may be abandoned, to maybe 10 days from now. The other things still to be scheduled are a follow up xray and pulmonary function test. As we exited the hospital we had an opportunity for Jim O'Hara from the VGH foundation office to get his first look at Tesfaye upright and walking post surgery.

Later in the evening when I got home from the office and my workout, Lis was over visiting for a while but could not stay for dinner, but Jim and Haley were staying. Tesfaye's appetite has been growing so nicely we bought him his own special fork and spoon set ; ). We all enjoyed the warm Vancouver summer evening by having a light BBQ chicken meal seated outdoors on the patio. Ever since Tesfaye's arrival on May 20 our weather has been unbelievable; he certainly has brought sunshine into our lives.

2 comments:

Haley C said...

Dad, u need to quit your day job and become a writer.

Stephanie S. said...

...for hallmark

just kidding

xo
steph