And if it blows my mind, can you imagine what the helicopter/plane flying overhead did to them?
Month: May 2008
Skin grafts 101
They are, by all accounts, highly temperamental.
The site where they take the skin from is far more painful than the site which requires it.
This is because they basically use a fancy potato peeler and scrape incredibly thin layers of skin from a part of your body not expecting to have incredibly thin layers of skin scraped from it.
They liken the pain to that of the gravel rash you get when you stack your bike as a kid.
Just worse.
Skin graft patients are located in the ‘Serious Burns Unit’. Well they are at the big teaching public hospital Chef is at.
I have presumed this is because both burns and plastic surgery involving skin grafts need to be in the most clean, most germ-free, environment.
For the first five days following the grafting you are not allowed to move.
This may simply be because Chef’s is on his leg – I’m not sure.
I’d ask a nurse but they all look very very serious and very very scary.
Not for small talk.
Considering their work involves caring for people with ‘serious burns’ I totally get this demeanour.
They do not change the dressing on either the graft site or the initial wound.
Apparently, if they were to take the dressing off the site where the skin was taken from, they would simply be ripping off the new skin growing underneath.
On Day Five, they will look at both.
Like a grand unveiling.
Then there is a further three weeks recuperation where there are apparently incredibly strict rules about caring for the wound sites.
There are rooms in the ward called a ‘bathroom procedure room’.
They feature a low lying long metal rectangle that the patient must lie on.
There is a sink and that’s about it.
Man in a cape
In around the same place I saw the fat man on a bike.
A young guy.
Tall.
Lanky.
Walking to the bus stop.
Loping really.
Wearing a full-on, flowing in the wind, full-length black cape.
Things that have been shitting me to tears
- That every person I see driving a BMW x7 or the Audi equivalent are agressive, speeding road hogs. And generally male and aged in their forties. I’m just saying.
- The mothers who don’t have to get in the pool with their kids for their swimming lesson but insist on using the change room to get them dressed afterwards (I’m talking kids who are three or four and are still in that land of not caring about being naked in public). Thereby hogging all the space that technically should be reserved for those of us dripping wet harridans who are fucking cold and need to get dressed without some three year old little shit perving on us.
- That the floor of the change room has a layer of water on it. I am of the belief it should not be an extension of the pool itself.
- Everyone whinging about the price of petrol. Either get over it or catch a fucking bus. JESUS.
- The price of diesel.
- That you get side-effects from taking too bigger dose of your meds just like you do when you first start taking them that make you feel as shitty as you were feeling when you weren’t taking them.
- That my meds have not been working.
- That I now have to take one lot of meds in the morning and a different one in the evening.
- To counter the negative effects the one in the morning are having on me.
- Mental health.
- Sibling fighting.
- I keep forgetting to buy tonic water.
- Traffic.
- The current state of our house.
- The amount of washing I need to do.
- The amount of washing I need to hang out.
- The amount of washing I need to put away.
- This goddamn headache that I’ve had for about three weeks.
- My weight.
- That I can’t find the right chocolate to hit the spot of my current chocolate need.
- The amount of chocolate I’m consuming anyway to find that elusive chocolate.
- That potato chips are fattening.
- 3am.
- Dogs.
- That the fish tank needs cleaning.
- Storage issues and a lack of solutions.
- Our laundry.
- That I push four kids out my fanny and never got a private room or a room with views of the harbour bridge and city skyline or a seven day hospital stay.
- That I paid $41 for a seven day hospital parking pass when this evening I discovered I could just have mis-used our disabled parking sticker and parked for free every single visit irrespective of Oscar being with me.
- Car parks.
- Having to do the grocery shop and put it all away.
- How no matter how many times I vacuum our $100 Ikea rug in one day it is covered in food crumbs and fluff in minutes.
- Cleaning toilets.
- Grouting.
* Chef have his skin graft operation yesterday afternoon. He’s in the burns and plastics ward which is very shmick with city views and a level of sterility I want to roll around in. Granted, he has two wound sites, one of which hurts like hell as they’ve basically shaved skin off his body and he has to lie on his back for five days and shit in a bedpan and piss into a bottle, but hell, I’d do that for seven days respite.
Thursday
Teacher’s strike. Four children at home.
8.30 appointment with ENT to remove splint from Oscar’s nose.
Meltdown?
You bet.
Comment to me as we left the ENT’s tiny room?
“You poor sod”.
I thought I looked OK – I’d changed my shirt from the one covered in Grover’s breakfast, blow-dried my hair and got four children out of the house and to his rooms on time.
Onto local shopping centre.
Three boys for haircuts.
First – Felix – an angel.
He looks hot.
For an eight year old.
Oscar and Jasper occupied at pet shop window across the way
Second – Oscar.
Meltdown?
You bet.
Felix and Jasper raise hell playing chasing and tackling outside the shop and, as Felix tells me later, inside other stores.
Third – Jasper – an angel.
He looks adorable.
As two and a half year olds should.
Oscar and Felix play their Nintendos.
Then on to get an icecream.
Detour to shoe shop for new sneakers for Oscar to wear when he’s not wearing his superlegs.
Useless shop assistant.
None in Oscar’s size.
Felix and Jasper amuse themselves on a Bob the Builder ride.
The lady not there at the ice cream shop.
Back in two minutes says the sign.
Five minutes pass.
We go to Kmart because the ‘laydee gawn to toylet’ according to Jasper.
Find hideous sneaker type shoes for Oscar that 10 year olds love and parents hate.
They’re two sizes bigger than the sneakers he’s been wearing.
Maybe that limp hasn’t been related to his CP but being crippled by negligent parenting.
Boys choose slurpee over ice cream.
Jasper has one sip, says it’s spicy. I get him an ice cream instead because now? I’m all about picking my battles.
But then he consumes his ice cream and his slurpee.
The kid is cunning.
Bump into old next door neighbour and catch-up on our various dramas.
Turns out her father had an affair and now has a two year old with the mistress but is still staying with her mother rather than at his house with the mistress and child.
Everyone has their dramas.
Into Woollies to get some bits and pieces for lunch and dinner.
Three of my children have simultaneous meltdowns while waiting in a large crowd to get a bbq chook.
Onward.
Everyone gets a treat regardless of behaviour.
Picking battles or the new pushover.
All to the car.
Grover – who’s been in the stroller through all these adventures is of course now asleep.
Everyone home.
Early lunch.
Grover back to bed.
Jasper falls asleep on the lounge.
Oscar plays more pro devolution soccer
Felix addicted to his Nintendo DS
I retire to our bedroom to watch some Oprah.
Boring episode about some cougar single mother who is a stripper.
Grover up.
Take big boys to swimming lesson.
Bump into the mother of four girls I met in the carpark at swimming (for Jasper) yesterday.
Catch up with mother of boy who went to early-ed with Oscar when they were about 2.
She has two boys with Fragile X.
They didn’t know she was a carrier as her mother had only had girls.
Everyone has their dramas.
Boys swim like champs.
Felix’s butterfly is impressive.
Oscar is so excited to be back in the pool.
Home.
AB home.
Dinner.
Mucking around.
Bed.