Tissue Expansion Nine

At long last this is the final fill.   Yay!  

Erik got to accompany Jamie and C to the Illinois Medical Center in Peoria two days after Christmas.

Peoria Illinois Medical Center

  It was a good thing they had the retractable measuring tape in the exam room again.  The fill went fine.  (Although I don't recommend mom wearing a white scarf to a procedure where blood oozes out of the injection point for 2 minutes after.)  We got the pain killers ordered for after the excision and got things wrapped up in a pre-operation sense.  Surgery date is January 22, 2014.  It is an outpatient procedure and they will keep him overnight for observation.  We are anxious and in preparation.  

C at the Peoria Riverfront Museum

Doctor Elwood is hopeful that he will be able to accomplish all the planned excision in this surgery.  The plan is to rebuild the hairline and side-burn area.  The parts of the mole that will remain as planned are in the eye-brow and eye-lid, a very small bit.      

Tissue Expansion Eight

Uncle Caleb got to accompany the troop to expansion eight.  Jamie picked him up at home the morning of the appointment after some inconsequential drama the night before involving a vehicle stalling on the Murray Baker Bridge, snow storm, and getting pushed off the interstate by a state trooper.  At this point the procedure is becoming routine, but we still cannot wait to be done with the waiting room drama, our heightened blood pressure, etc.  This time round we found a new object of curiosity to kill the waiting time....a retractable mini measuring tape in the doctors office.   C pulls on the end, it clicks out, Jamie pushes on the button to make it retract.  Endless fun - it occupied the 20 minutes until the fill began.

This fill injected 35 cc's into the rear balloon and 15 into the front.  The usual numbers, and we have now surpassed the stated expansion size of the balloons.  They do have room to stretch and we will be back with C one or two more times for further injection to expand confidence.

 

We have had to be careful about what shirts we put him in the day of expansions.  One might think that the size change is incremental enough that if you can get it on that you'll be able to get it off.  Well....we had to cut the collar of a shirt to get it off him because it wouldn't stretch back over his head.