Last week I travelled to St Thomas' Hospital in London to have my infected non-union treated and operated on first thing on Tuesday morning. As my previous post detailed, this was meant to be a pretty hefty bit of surgery, removing my plate, debridement of the fracture site (which I learnt meant trimming the bone down on each side and re-setting it, which would result in a shorter arm!) and application of an external fixator as modelled above by yours truly.
The good news I was given on the Wednesday morning during my surgeon's rounds was that the situation inside my arm was not as bad as originally anticipated. Usually, according to him, you see tracks of infection leading into the bone where the infection has taken hold... which weren't present. The bone that had started to grow to try and unite the fracture was actually in very good condition and looked healthy. For these reasons, they removed some bad scar tissue and infected tissue, took out my plate and screws and stitched me back up... no debridement! No short t-rex arm! They then made the four incisions for my four lovely pins and bolted my arm together to stabilise the fracture... job done.
I was discharged later that afternoon (not every 36 hours after the surgery started!) with a plethora of anti-inflammatories, painkillers and antibiotics... which, following the swabs which were taken on Monday, are the wrong type for the small infection I do have in the tissue of my arm (the bacteria is resistant to co-amoxiclav, apparently) so they just moved me onto Ciprofloxacin (try saying that five times quickly whilst pissed, I dare you!) to clear that up.
All in all, I'm hoping this is the final straight home!
