Chapter Eleven
The sun had just managed to pop over the horizon and to be done: Some skin grafting onto my hands. My face - though it was damaged - waited before it had any work done on it, but if I was going to have any hands left, surgery on them couldn't wait! Right before surgery started, I was completely knocked out with an anesthesia.
I wish I could show you some photographs that had been taken of my hands before they were grafted. The skin around my thumbnail was black with the rest of the upper thumb having white skin. As for the bottom of my thumb- all of it was this vivid red.
As for the palm, the center had about two American quarters set side by side of white skin. That skin and just like the white skin on my thumb was so damaged, it was barely attached to my hand.
As for the rest of my hand and my other hand as well, right before I was knocked out with the anesthesia that's when the doctor informed me, "My hands were the worst burned he'd seen in a long time."
During surgery on them the skin, and no matter the color of it, was removed so the grafted skin could be applied. To start the skin grafting there were areas of my body that hadn't been burned that a thin layer of skin was shaved off with something called a dermatome. These unburned areas are called donor sites, and in my case, my upper back and lower abdomen had the thin layer of skin shaved off them.
This thin skin was then stapled to my hands to hold it securely in place. I had 150 plus staples in each hand! Nice... Huh?
While I was in the surgery recovery room and Starsky and I were staring at the staples, shocked that there were so many of them, the doctor told us he was completely confident the grafts were going to take 100 percent. "That's great!" Starsk and I readily agreed!
Though, with good news often comes the bad news. The bad news? I soon found out that the shaved donor sites were being just as painful as the 2nd-degree burns on my body were!
By the way, though I don't think there is anything thrilling about my car accident and catching on fire, such was deemed thrilling enough to make all the local television news and the newspapers and the radio stations.
Then the donor sites were covered in a protective sheet. The sheet called Scarlet Red. This is a bandage that is wet, red, sticky and viscous. The gooey bandage on each donor site was needed to help them heal faster. These red dressings had to stay on eight days, save one, along with the staples before they could be removed. Every night the donor sites were subjected to a heat lamp to dry up the Scarlet Red, otherwise, it would've been harder for the nurses to remove it without injuring the skin.
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Back to right before I was wheeled into surgery to have the skin on my hands removed, the unburned skin on my upper back and lower abdomen shaved off with the dermatome, and then that skin grafted and stapled onto my hands… Starsky inquired, "You want me to walk beside that surgery gurney you're laying on to the doors of the operating room?"
But try as he might to keep his stomach from rumbling and growling and gurgling he couldn't. So he didn't become ill, he needed some food in his stomach.
"I love you but really I'll be fine! Go find yourself some burritos with onions or something!"
After thinking it over some he disappeared to the hospital's cafeteria.