Day 17 - January 7 - Ten little piggies stayed home

Today was my first visit to the burn clinic at the Vancouver General. It is also the day that I learned that I would be keeping all of my toes, so suffice to say, it was a good day.

The dressing change went smoothly and quickly, the nurse being no-nonsense and going straight for the jugular, manhandling my toes through the old bandage removal, cleaning, photographing (here they photograph the toes for their records), and finally redressing. By my next visit in a couple of weeks, I will hopefully be done with bandages altogether, although Right#2, which seems to be the worst overall, may still need some TLC. In my first sense of weak-stomachness during this whole ordeal, I cringed as she cut away the skin. While all of the other toes have lost skin on their tops, their pads underneath hard, sickly in colour and likely dead, are still intact. Right#2 on the other hand is now an open wound around its full circumference - a naked little piggy.

In another first today, I was astounded by the lack of bedside manner of my doctor, presumably a specialist as I was in the burn unit after all, when he expressed his dismay that I had not been changing my dressings daily. Well as a matter of fact I do just happen to have plenty of stock of Acticote silver dressings, ample gauze, gel, sterile water, saline, tape, not to mention the expertise to assess, clean and dress my own swollen and blistered toes. Despite this, his diagnosis was agreeable - all my them are mine to keep.