Connor's Leg Exposed

 Connor cast had now been in place over six weeks. Connor rarely complained but had admitted to it hurting and itching at times. We went in for his check up hoping that the cast could come off. The doctor took a look at the x-ray and felt that the cast needed to be on a little longer since the bone graft had not yet taken. 

 We decided that it would be best to have a new cast put on since it was getting a little ripe and rather smelly.  Connor was a little jumpy as they put the saw to the cast and then began pulling it off. The smell continued to get worse, but we ignored it thinking that the stinky cast would be off and in the garbage soon. We all waited with great anticipation to see how everything looked underneath, and this is what we found!

 Connor's leg was in very bad shape. The upper leg was covered in yellow crusts.  The entire leg was very very wet, stinky and  raw. The  incisions had not healed as I had expected, and they were weeping yellow fluid. As you can see from the picture below, Connor was feeling a little sick at the sight of it. 

 The nurse double wrapped the offensive cast, and said that she would have to get the doctor to come and take a look at it.  While we sat there, my over active nursing mind though of every terrible scenario.

We waited nearly 2 hours before the doctor could break away from his appointments and take a look at Connor's leg.  Without much thought he said that Connor had had an allergic reaction to something that they had used in surgery and he would make a note of it in his chart.  He prescribed some cream, instructed the nurse to put Connor's foot in a boot and sent him home with an appointment three weeks later.

We joked with Connor that his leg and foot looked like something from the "Walking Dead." It smelt like it too.  Luckily,  he was allowed to have showers, so that night, I took some gauze and rubbed the  crust off after the leg  had soaked a while.   It took days to get it all off , the raw skin to  heal over and the giant scabs to fall off.  It was all I could do not to pick it. ( Heather will understand what I mean.)