The Saga Continues...

Buckle up, friends. All hands in the moving vehicle at all times. No, for real...hang on tight. We're in for another bumpy ride.

Unfortunately, we had a significant bump in the road to recovery today. As we mentioned before, Zane has been feeling great! No pain meds for quite some time now, great updates at the post-op appointments, and an overall sense that all was going according to plan. And that was exactly what was happening...until today.

The major complication we'd been praying against became obvious this morning. The Med Por ear "popped through" the skin graft. As I was applying his morning ointment and drops, I noticed a visibly white piece of hard material. After talking with Landry...who's been in charge of all that while Chris and I were away...the scab over that part of the new ear just fell away last night. So the scab had either been covering up the extrusion, or it actually happened sometime during the night.  

I immediately called the hospital to see if they'd want us to come in before our next scheduled post-op next Tuesday. The nurse asked me to take some pictures and send her a quick email. Within a few minutes, the surgeon was calling me. I was right...the new ear had indeed popped through the skin. He wasn't surprised about the location of the extrusion as this was the area at the bottom of the flap that wouldn't have had as much blood supply as the rest of the ear. He talked some more to his staff and then called me back to say he wanted us back up at the hospital tomorrow...for a second surgery to repair the issue. He's planning to use some more skin behind the new ear to pull over and cover the Med Por. He's also hoping that because we're catching it very early, the new skin graft will hold. 

His major initial concern is a high risk for injection at the extrusion site. He called in some more antibiotics, oral and topical, to fight against that.

So...here we go...this time we're looking at roughly a 3 hour surgery and sleeping in our own beds when it's all said and done. I hope he's right! Compared to the 15 hour surgery and the overnight chaos, we'll take it! :) 

Once again, we are so thankful for each and every one of you and all the prayers offered on our behalf.