OUCH!

If you're eating while reading this ... don't go any further. Yucky pic to follow.

My "little" procedure in the clinic yesterday turned out to be a lot more invasive than either Dr. Krempl or I thought that it would be. He just gave me some local anesthesia and opened me up to revise my trach scar. It had tethered and looked like a belly button so we fixed it. I just didn't realize that the incision to correct it would be so large. I took an "after" pic that I emailed home to mom and dad for them to see what had been done so I thought I'd include it on here too. I'll include them on the end so that you can't see them right when you pull up my page. Anyway, the reason that he needed to make the incision so big was because there was a lot of unexpected scar tissue. He cut out 2 pretty big chunks of scar tissue. I didn't realize that's what he was doing at the time. I knew he was doing a lot of cutting (because I could hear the scissors) but he wasn't telling me what he was getting out. I saw it all sitting on the sterile table once we were done. It took him about an hour and a half to get it all done and the stitches in. It took so long that the lidocaine was starting to wear off and I could feel about the last 3 stitches. He offered to numb me up some more but I told him to just keep going. I was ready for him to be done and besides, after all I've been through, what's a couple of stitches! I have to admit that I was a bit shocked when I was finally able to see what he had done. I didn't expect the incision to be so long but what could I do at that point. Now it looks like I've tried twice to slit my throat and have been unsuccessful at 2 suicide attempts. Dr. Krempl said that he was trying to make sure that once it's all healed it will look good with the wedding coming up. So anyway,
here's the before and after pic.
I had to call into the office this morning to get Dr. Krempl to call me in some pain medicine. I'm hurting pretty good this morning. I now understand why my chin had to be sown down to my chest with my surgery. It hurts for anything internally to move, so swallowing is almost out of the question. I took today off work again but I may have to take a few more days off as well.