The Little Lion - Rory's Story

 Firstly, thank you for checking in to see how Rory is getting on! Pete and I very much appreciate the ongoing support.  His recovery from the amputation is going excellently. The stump itself is healing really well, and from the day we got home he was putting weight on it and crawling around the house as normal - there's no stopping him; he's so fast!  He's now completely off the pain relief and down to one simple plaster-type dressing which we change at home once a week (or more often if he pulls it off himself - which tends to happen every few days). Sheffield did provide a stump sock for him to wear over the dressing, but it wasn't so much a compression stocking, more of a tubi-grip bandage to protect the actual dressing. After a few days we noticed that it was aggravating the centre of his skin graft and causing some inflammation, so we stopped wearing that and just made sure he had a normal sock on all the time, to stop him pulling the dressing off and to protect ...

Before jumping into the skin graft journey I feel it's a good time to look back at how much progress we've made over the last two months, despite the fact that reduced visits to Sheffield have meant things have been pretty quiet for us.  This photo was taken on 5th January, at 6 months old.    Looking pretty different to 5th November, 4 months old.  I'll run through the various points of note in the November image:  1) The big one is the Vac Dressing. That's the machine in the black bag which is attached to Rory's leg. Regular readers will recall that the vac was permanently attached to Rory for about two months, from when the dead skin had been debrided to once the skin graft was mostly healed. Its purpose was to keep the open wound clean and clear of infection, and also to encourage blood vessels to grow upwards and prevent a dip or crater in his leg as the graft healed. We were all glad to be rid of the vac! 2) Difficult to see on this image but behind the le...

Disclaimer One:  I should start this and every post with a disclaimer that any of the medical facts I discuss are mine and Pete's interpretation of what we've been told by doctors and nurses. They may not necessarily be 100% accurate as we have been overwhelmed with information, but are our best attempts at understanding the extensive details of Rory's illness and recovery. Disclaimer Two:  This post contains some upsetting photos that up to now we haven't shared. Please be prepared to see some graphic images of Rory's leg injury.  Development of the Extravasation Wound In my last post I described how the Extravasation injury was caused (a leak from an IO line), and how we originally expected the long term damage to be some discolouration or scarring.  During Rory's stay on NSU he received regular visits from the Burns Nurses who came to redress his leg (as the skin was being handled in a similar way to an extreme burn), as well as the Plastic Surgery Team who w...