Day 95: The Unveiling

Well, after my shower this morning, some of the tape strips were starting to peel, so I decided it was time to get rid of them. This is what was revealed underneath.

The upper scope hole (here the lower one) is still a little open, but not bleeding. The two other scope holes look pretty well closed, though scabbed over. The big incision though....ugh. The bottom is still not closed and has bled a little today. You can't tell from the photo, but the big incision is really bumpy - the skin is kind of bunched up a little bit along the length of the incision. My mom had something similar with her wrist surgery last summer, and it's smoothed out pretty well, so I figure this will too, over time.

I didn't realize that there was such bruising around the incisions - they look kind of yellow in the photo. The scope holes were also surprising. For my previous surgeries, they were just little slits, but for this one they're more like "H" shapes. They look funny to me.

Now I have to get the adhesive residue off....I've done an OK job for now, but I can still see some in places that I have no desire to start rubbing/picking at the moment.

One other thing - to the left of the big incision (in this photo), between it and the left scope hole, my skin is numb. I noticed this when the tech took the stitches out a week ago, but it's the oddest sensation. I can press on the skin and feel pressure, but not really anything else. As I move further to the left, beyond the scope hole, sensation starts to come back. The numbness extends the full length of the big incision, and only to the left of the incision. Weird. The tech said it usually comes back by about 6 weeks, but it happens because they dug around so much around the nerves when they were doing the work at that incision site. I guess if it hasn't started to come back by my next doctor's appointment I'll ask him about it.