At our follow up with Dr. Reinisch last week, he put some more blue silicone on and put a little hole in it for us to put drops through. This worked pretty well. Today, we removed the sock and cup and Dr. Colen removed the blue silicone. All this went pretty well. Definitely easier than the last time. The hardest part for Jack was the adhesive on the cup. Part of what is making it easier is ensuring that the sticky part of the tape is not in his hair when we put it on. Dr. Colen cleaned Jack's ear a bit and then we replaced the cup and sock. We decided to not remove the yellow gauze there in the office and agreed that I would do it tonight at home. We plan to go back in a few weeks to have all the packing removed from the ear canal. I sent Dr. Reinisch the pictures tonight and we will see what he has to say.
The only thing of concern for me was that there seems to be a dark spot on the skin graft. Dr. Colen said that this can happen sometimes and that the skin will likely slough off the top and the membrane below provides good blood flow for the skin to regenerate. Here are some pictures of his ear, you can see the spot below the canal and above the earlobe. The sponge and packing are still in his canal.
I think the ears are very even from the front, which is amazing.
When we got home, I took the sock back off and we removed the yellow gauze. I am glad we got it off now as it was much easier than the last time. We soaked the gauze with water by putting a wet washcloth on his head. Then, I pulled in the direction the hair was growing and it peeled off pretty easily. Here is a picture of the top of his head after the gauze was off and then Jack helping by holding the cup...
We have modified the cup to try to be a little easier on the sore spot that the cup is making on his head again. We cut out a gap at the top of the cup - here is a picture:
We then put some gauze under the edges where the cup meets his head. This s
will relieve some of the pressure, hopefully. I will watch this pretty closely over the next few days. Then we put a new sock on and here is a half smile from my ornery boy...
I am relieved that we are about half way through this recovery period and dreading the remainder of it. Jack is just bored not being able to run around. Tonight we let him ride his trike around the back patio. This seems to be a good release without running! Hopefully we can do that some more this weekend. Sometimes he likes to play "crash" and that would bring it all to a halt.
All for now, more soon...
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