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Well I was excited to go the clinic today because I was having my cast removed. Now cutting off the cast and taking off the bandages went slowly but smoothly. It required soaking the bandages where the blood dried the gauze to the skin and some slow peeling.
Now part 1 of 2 of the suckyness, yes I just made up a word to describe it, when you have a skin graft they take just the top layer of skin from the donor site and in this case it was my left thigh. For the recovery process they have this saran wrap like material that is sticky on one side, and yes the sticky side goes toward the skin. Where ever they took the skin it doesn't stick because the blood and discharge keep it wet, everywhere else it's stuck and no soaking will help because it's plastic. The nurse was awesome and has a ton experience at taking this stuff off thereby has many methods at removing it.
Method 1, pull quick like a band aid, now this saran wrap is big and went from above my knee to under my hip, why she started with the area next to my boys I don't know. The first jerk and a sting that rang through every part of my body was enough to ask for a different approach.
Method 2, pull more slowly and at an angle perpendicular from the skin. All I can say about this method is that it felt like she was taking another layer of skin to do another skin graft. Strike two.
Method 3, pull slowly at an angle almost parallel to the skin. Ahh, granted this was the slowest way off doing it but was the most bearable and didn't have me twitching every two seconds. Great my thigh is completely exposed and it was quickly redressed with Mepilex Ag. This stuff is not supposed to stick... as much!
Back to the hands. To keep the skin stretched over graft site the have to secure it to the surrounding healthy skin. On the right thumb they used dissolving sutures which you might be able to see in the photos. On the left had the graft site was maybe like ten times bigger, my doctor was pretty funny and she joked that she didn't want to do a bunch of sutures and decided on using staples. When I first saw all the staples all I could think was "I have a franken-hand." Now comes part 2, if you look at the picture of my left hand you will see a couple of the staples that fell out and how the are shaped, now imagine those digging into your skin. The tool that they use to remove the staples look like a pair of nail clippers, and the way they work is that one part goes under the staple but on top the skin. The second part of the tool comes down on top of the staple, bending it in half, it looked like a metal bird of prey releasing its talons out of a fresh carcass. Needless to say this was very uncomfortable, especially on the back of the hand and on the inside of the wrist. After all of that my hands were redressed, this time in a manner that I can actually hold stuff. The physiotherapist gave some new exercises and the doc set me up with a follow up next week!

Left Thigh
Right Thumb
Left Hand