APRIL/MAY 2014

    So the last month and a bit hasn't been very interesting -what's new? I hear you say - but I haven't even had many hospital appointments other than physiotherapy #boring
  Medically I got my second scalp operation booked in for the 17th July the first part of which I had back in October, you can read about that here. I had a few medical reports for the solicitors which aren't very fun but are necessary for our claim. And I continue making steady progress in my weekly hour long physiotherapy sessions which I have now been having for 20 months (since I left hospital)! I still use the wheelchair for longer journeys but am using two walking sticks to make shorter distances. I'm having some nerve pain in some of my scars most noticeably in the large burn on my back which causes me to jolt but we're just seeing how that goes for now.
 
    In other news it was my dog sargent's 11th birthday on April 13th (think I'm scraping the barrel for this post...) We adopted him after he was fired by my grandparents 5 years ago, he was one of their guide dogs (both my grandparents are blind) but he kept making mistakes and was scared to go out with them so he was pretty useless...

  It was my best friend of 10/11 years Beckie's 21st birthday and with the help of some of my mass of equipment (below) I was able to go out for a few drinks for it! I'm definitely not at clubbing level yet but I haven't even been able to do that since the crash!

Quite the collection!

The cake I knocked up for her

Me and Beckie about 2 years before the crash

   

    Lastly, my lovely boyfriend (and 'carer') jetted off to Holland a week ago on the 19th May (well slowly went there via coach..) he's gone with two friends to travel through a few places in Europe for a month. He really deserved this break after all the sacrifices he has made and continues to make for me over the last almost two years because of this crash. However as well as all the lovey dovey 'I miss him' stuff, he is my main source of leaving the house! I see my two fantastic best friends once a week and have physiotherapy and a driving lesson once a week but other than that I'm pretty stuck. I think I've made plenty of comments on how bored and stuck inside I always am but it's still rubbish! I think it's hard for people to understand what it's like being bed/house bound and not able to go out alone (I certainly wouldn't of before the crash) and I'm lucky that one day despite life long problems I will be more independent than this. But I do literally spend days on end finding rubbish to watch to fill the hours and it's very lonely. I have watched every episode of the only way is essex twice in the last two years..I'm not even going to list any others haha I regain my street cred watching Breaking Bad and Dexter with Joss!
Moaning aside I am going away for a few days in a few weeks and Joss will be back in just over 3 weeks!

Hopefully I will have slightly more interesting news in the next post, thank you for the few comments I've had lately I do LOVE getting comments :)
DRIVE SAFE, George xxx

Wednesday 26th September - First real shower!!!

   So as I have said many times before my 'washing situation' was weird and always changing...
Briefly -

• Intensive care - Rolled and wiped down to try and prevent bed sores. Agony.
• 1st 3 weeks on Trauma ward - Rolled and bed bathed daily by nurses.
• 4th Week on Trauma ward - Showered on special chair daily to clear burn infection.
• 1st week and a half on Burns Unit - Hair washed over special bath by nurses and only allowed to wash at sink to not get graft VAC dressing wet. 

So Monday My graft was again confirmed failed but they decided to try and help the wound heal with dressings. Wednesday  morning my nurse came in and asked if I wanted a shower?..erm YES!

She helped me onto the commode toilet/shower chair and wheeled me into 'my' bathroom (I was allowed to use the treatment bathroom as mine because of the wheelchair). Wheeled me into the far corner where the shower is, helped me undress and took my backdressing off, wrapped my donor site dressing in a bin liner and...LEFT!
First time in 6 weeks I was in a bathroom in the shower alone, no cast wrapped in a bag! She left all my wash things on another chair next to me and I had to figure out how to do it all myself! It was a lot harder than you probably think, trying to wash my 'hair' (the half left) without touching the big skinned section of my scalp and my shoulder injury's. I was desperately trying to avoid touching my burns and I couldn't bend down or wash the backs of my legs but it was AMAZING!


When I was done I pulled the nurse cord and she came back, followed by a team of doctors. She asked them to wait outside while she came through the privacy curtain and helped my dry and dress my bottom half. Then I had to hold a towel over my chest so the doctors could come and look at my back. After my mum arrived and a conversation with her the decided if she felt confident to do my infection control dressing I could be discharged tomorrow! I will add she was allowed to do it because she is a midwife and so understands how to perform infection control and I would be coming in every week to see the nurses here anyway. So they showed her exactly what to do and I eventually went back to my bed very excited indeed!

Monday 24th September - Graft review...

   Monday 24th September 2012 I woke up nervous! I was having my second skin graft reviewed today. The first one as I explained here, was traumatic first I was told it had taken then I was told it had completely failed, was massively infected and I needed another one as soon as the infection was gone. My burns consultant came to see me the day before and told me that if it had failed again I might be able to go home for a few days but then come back for another graft.
   Even though I had gone through ALL of this and one failed graft I still thought 'It wont be failed again, it wont happen to me'. I was given lots of morphine and sat up and my Vac dressing taken off, the curtain around my bed was shut and I had to wait for my consultant. My mom was texting me trying to find out what was happening, this was a BIG event. The outcome of this affected my future scarring, whether I could leave hospital, Operations...
   Eventually Mr V arrived with a bundle of medical students and junior doctors. A nurse came in to hold my hand while he looked at my back. It was silent for about a minute and then I heard him say 'where is the graft?..' I felt sick, completely devastated. After some discussion between themselves he asked them all to leave so he could speak to me privately. (something I really value in this consultant) He looked sad, he specifically chose to take over my care and knew what I'd been through and how much I wanted to go home. He explained that it had almost all failed again, I asked about having another but after a chat with my nurses and their colleagues they decided I had to stay in a few more days but we'd treat the burn with dressings soaked in beta-dine again and try and avoid another graft. I was happy because I wanted to go home and couldn't face another gruelling skin graft operation but it meant my scarring would be worse. It also meant that again my body had failed to accept its own skin, it may be silly but that in itself is hard to accept.
   Now I had to have the dreaded staples out again, I was going to attach a photo of a similar graft but thought you may prefer just the staple instruments for less gore!

I wont ramble on about how much having the staples out hurts again but Just think - big full thickness burn, open wound, actual staples being pulled out...The only benefit to having such a severe burn is that it has burnt through everything including nerves so I could only feel the ones around the edge being taken out not the ones imbedded in the burn!
DRIVE SAFE, George xxx

 

Thursday 20th September - Moved to a shared room...

     The day after my second skin graft Joss and my mom were in the room with me when the sister came in and told me they had to move me to a shared room. They packed my things, unplugged my bed and wheeled me up the corridor and into this big empty room. I was crying because every change was so frightening to me. I had been in my own room for 5 weeks since leaving the intensive care unit and I liked it that way. Not because I was loving that I got a private room, but it was an ordeal every time I had to use the bathroom - the toilet in this room was on the opposite side of the room next to the other bed which was currently empty. I liked that in my own room I could just lie with the tv on and pretend none of this was real, I couldn't even use my laptop on this ward and I was worried about having to make conversation with whoever shared the room. I'm not the kind of person who can just shut the bed curtain and ignore someone but I was too weak to talk lots. The one plus of this room was there were a few high up small windows! An ounce of natural light!
   From this day I had a new person in my room everyday and quite frankly it was horrible. I will give you an outline of the 'one-nighters' without giving any info about them just in case! They were all women as you can't mix sexes in the 2 bed bays.
Night 1 - Burnt hands from sticking them in a bonfire. Snored so loud the nurse was actually distressed that I would be unable to sleep. Discharged next morning.
Night 2 - Planned operation. TV unbearably loud all night. Discharged next morning.
Night 3 - Thrown aerosol on fire 'sunburnt' face. Discharged next morning.
Night 4 - NO-ONE!
Night 5 - Tea spilt in lap. Dramatic antics. Discharged next morning.
Night 6 - Lovely old lady who had falleed until I left.n down the stairs (only available bed). Stayed until I left

    I hate to seem un-caring but it was very very hard to have sympathy for the majority of these. They kicked up more fuss than I had the whole time about very minor injuries and moaned like they were being kept in a prison. I also had a few thoughtless comments about a singed fringe when I was lying there with half a shaved scalp.
   But they weren't to know that I wasn't in the same vote as them (minus the obvious wheelchair and wires) and I'm glad that I was a rare incident. It's a good thing the nurses were shocked at how long I'd been in hospital and when they read my notes because it means that it's not common to be hit, run over and dragged down a road and it's not common to receive such a multitude of injuries. I hate that all this happened to me but I'm genuinley glad that it doesn't happen to many people because it's horrific.
DRIVE SAFE, George xxx

First glimpse of the burn...(fairly graphic description)

     The last post and this one do not have dates in the title as they either span a period of time or I can't remember the exact day.
    The week they were desperatley trying to clear the infection from the failed skin graft on my back was about 3 weeks after the crash. But I still hadn't really seen the extent of any of my external injuries and they were dressed or in places I couldn't see. I couldn't even turn my head enough to see my shoulder when they changed the dressings and obviously not my scalp, so I had NO idea what the situation with my back was really. Infact it hadn't even occured to me that they would all obviously become scars I would have forever.
    As I explained last post, the daily infection routine involved being put in the wet room and my burn undressed and washed. On this particular day my nurse left the room after washing the burn to find some more dressing packs. The water turned off and I felt instantly cold so I reached for the shower 'on' button. The shower was turned on and off by this large silver 'button' type thing. (I happened to find a picture of a bathroom on ward 412 which I was on...below)

     As I put my arm forward I caught a glimpse of my side in the silver. I thought it was someone else and looked behind me, obviously there was no-one there. The burn is from my left side on my waist/hip and follows round my back to my spine, it is rectangular as it was caused by my back becomming stuck and melted to the drivers exhaust. The only way I could describe it was 'zombie bite'. It wasn't just red, it was green, yellow, white, black, bubbled, mangled and oozing. It looked like it had been chewed . The burn was full thickness and so went through every layer which meant it also 'scooped' in like something really had just bitten a massive chunk out of me.
   I felt shocked, horrified, scared, alone, ugly and mostly like none of this was really happening.

Treating the infection...an hour in the bathroom...

  The day my infection treatment started (over 3 weeks after the accident) was pretty eventful...
So incase you havn't read all the posts very briefly, by this point I had had my urinary catheter removed and when I needed the toilet I was transferred to a commode which luckily fitted over the toilet in my bathroom, then I had to use the buzzer again to be brought from the toilet and put back into bed. Anyway on this day (12th september) as most days, my mom left before afternoon visiting and put me into/onto the toilet before Joss arrived. (I got her to do this because I hated buzzing the nurses everytime I needed the loo as I felt they were busy doing more important things) So when I was ready I tried to see if I could reach the flush myself yet, I still couldn't and noticed that the seat was covered in blood which was dripping off the side. It was coming from my back/burn. I pulled the buzzer cord and waited about 5 minutes. Then a male health care assistant came in and looked shocked like he'd walked in on someone by accident. I explained that people had to bring me back to bed and that I was worried as there was blood pouring out of me. He said he would go and get the nurse (could of taken me off the loo first!), so I sat waiting, and waiting...eventually I heard Joss's voice which meant I had been on the loo waiting for 45 minutes. He came in, I told him about the blood and he went into the corridor ''my girlfriends been left in the toilet nearly an hour''. Don't get me wrong the nurses were horrified and it had been a miss-comunication, the sister thought he had brought me back to bed!
   She came straight in got me out and into bed and looked at my back, the bleeding had slowed but she decided now would be a good time to take my staples out. Having staples pulled out feels exactly like having staples pulled out of your skin. I don't know how many there were but they went the entire way round my burn holding the skin (which died) on. So I'd say 30 or more probably. It hurt like fuck, I could feel them being pulled out of the healthy skin they were anchored into.
  After this and the meeting with my new consultant mr VN I needed daily infection treatment. This involved being put onto the commode chair in the morning, wheeled into the bathroom under the shower area. The nurse then had to remove my pjamas and underwear, put a towel over my crotch for 'dignity' *what's dignity again I cant remember anymore? then a carier bag over my wrist cast and angle me so other dressings didn't get wet. They soaked the dressing so it hurt less to pull off, showered water over the burn and washed it with special stuff. That REALLY hurt every day, I always said it was fine because i hate making fuss at nurses but JESUS having someone rub a massivley infected full thickness burn is the second most painful thing I have ever experienced (second to being rolled onto a smashed pelvis and snapped leg). Then they washed my hair and body, dried me and dressed me. People probably think, 'oh god how embarrassing' but having my hair washed under a real shower instead of in bed in an inflatable bowl was incredible. I was in too much pain and too vulnerable to care about these amazing people having to see me naked and wash and dress me and wipe my ass. THEN once dried and partailly dressed came the infection clearing wound dressing, I had to have betadine soaked gauze strapped all over the burn. which always soaked bright orange through my pjamas, bedding, everything!
  I actually didn't mind the dressing part of the day as I always had a joke with wichever nurse I had as they got orange everywhere and competed to see who could strap it better so less leaked out, one of my favourite nurses frank even joked about seeing me naked on our first meeting. He was quite young and little things like that, that genuinley made me laugh made me feel a little more human again.
DRIVE SAFE, George x

Wednesday 5th September - 10th September Ups and DOWNS...

  It may read as though I'm skipping days throught this blog, I'm writing it from a diary my mom kept whilst I was in hospital to keep track of what happened when, for the solicitors.
  These were a stressful few days (everyday was but these more so...). On Wednesday the 5th September DAY 18 in hospital, my Vacum dressing was removed from my back (full thickness burn and graft) again. Once again this happened out of nowhere for me as a team of doctors, students and a consultant came into my room and talked about me to eachother while my nurse came in as fast as possible to try and get down what they were doing, so that I would know and so it would also be in my notes! They made me sit forward for this which was marginally better than being rolled but I had to hang on to my nurse to hold myself up and it killed my back, my pelvis, my legs everything. The removal itself hurt a lot, they peeled it off pretty fast but the thing is completley, air and water tight so it sticks pretty hard. They peered at the burn and muttered to themselves that it didnt look good 'here or here' but was probably 80% taken. That means 80% of the skin stapled onto the burn had survived and was doing well. They re-dressed it with a fabric dressing and special pads. They also pulled the dressings off my head, shoulder and hip and left them open for the nurse to try and figure out what they wanted doing with them! That was the first time I had seen my shoulder and hip injuries and they were pretty nasty. They called it 'road damage' or 'road burns' and basically where I had been dragged 10m under a car the tarmac had ripped through my jeans and 100% leather jacket and basically dragged and rubbed big patches of skin off me. My hip skin was hanging off and so was stitched back on and I have large areas of scar tissue which were once essentially gaping holes. The same happened to my head, my helmet was driven over and ripped up at some point and my scalp was rubbed away to my skull on the right side. Hense the hair removal, LUCKILY my hair has grown back through some of the scar tissue on my scalp and so they can cut out the remainder of scar tissue and pull it together to create a straight line scar. Which if you'd seen my head in A&E should be absolutley amazing!
  On Friday 7th September my wrist was comfirmed broken. One of the first things I recall when I came out of the coma was telling the nurses my wrist hurt (I couldnt feel my lower body so it didnt hurt at that time) they told me it was probably just a sprain because they had done a full body scan...Nope 3 weeks later it was 100% broken and put in plaster! Meaning I only had one un-damaged are (my left arm).
  Monday 10th September was heartbreaking really. It was DAY 23 and I was told I may be able to be transferred to a nearer hospital if I carried on progressing well, I was desperate to go home and really hoping for that. I met Mr VN (Im not sure if Im allowed to use his full name so I wont!) this day, he is a very senior burns and plastics consultant, he's also a wing commander in the army and runs private plastic surgery clinics in london. He had been told about me and wanted to take over as my burns consultant. He looked at my back, didn't order someone else to take off the dressings and actually spoke TO me! Sadly he took one look at my back and was absolutley certain the graft had completley failed and that the wound was becomming extremley infected. He was furious that someone had looked at it and told us it was 80% taken becuase it was 0% taken. They told me I'd have to go straight onto antibiotics, have my back treated everyday and when it was clear repeat the whole skin graft procedure. I was completley devastated I couldnt believe any of this had happened and just wanted to go back and never leave the house that day. I still do.
 

Monday 3rd September...No more Catheter or PCA Plenty of infection...

 This post is quite personal, they all are but I think bodily functions are always more embarrassing to talk about! I'm writing it anyway because this blog is also a way of me keeping a diary because I keep forgetting to actually write in mine (Im using it to write these because we had to keep one for the solicitors from day one). Also I want to capture every detail because these sort of things don't cross peoples minds when they think of crashes, so if you don't want to know about me going to the toilet by all means don't read it haha
  3rd September over two weeks since the crash. I had spent all of this time with a 'urinary catheter' this was put in when I arrived as it was pretty obvious I wasnt going to be able to go to a toilet anytime soon. Also while I was in a coma I was being pumped with fluids so obviously your bladder still needs to empty but you cant go so the tube goes all the way into the urethra (don't worry I wont be attatching any photos! aha) and continually drains into a box/bag. This stayed in for so long because my injuries were so severe i could not even use a bed pan regularly. But after over two weeks it had to come out because of the high infection risk. I was terrified. I thought it takes a few nurses and a lot of pain to get from my bed onto the commode chair and if theyre busy they wont answer my buzzer quickly. Plus I hadn't felt the need or gone for a wee in over two weeks, I think I forgot that you don't suddenly need the loo then wet yourself...So anyway they took it out at midnight (not something you want to be woken up for) I don't know if it hurt going in as I was in a coma but it stung coming out! You have to pee within six hours or you need another put in and I went at 5.55am I like to live on the edge! Anyway it wasn't as bad as I thought, I had a commode (basically a chair with a hole in that you can fit a pot under to be used as a toilet) luckily while I was in hospital the commode chair actually fitted over the toilet in my 'en-suite' so once I was on it the nurse could just push me in and it was basically the same as using the toilet I just had to buzz for them to come and get me out. They also had to pull my bottoms up/down for the first week because I couldn't move to lift or adjust like you normally could. Actually it wasn't even embarrassing I was so weak, so vulnerable and in constant agony I really didn't care. I didn't care when I had to be bed bathed naked and rolled over so someone could wash my back and I didnt care that someone had to wipe my ass at 19. But think about that when you think 'I'll just speed through here I'm going to be late' or think about showing off in your car. I didnt care because I didnt have the ability to care at that point.
  My PCA (patient controlled analgesia-morphine) was also taken away. Funnily enough they don't really like you to be filling yourself with an opiate for more than two weeks! Luckily I was still allowed Oramorph (drinkable morphine) whenever I wanted it because jesus did I need it. Skin stapled to a huge burn on your back, countless broken bones burst liver and road burns really fucking hurt. Plus my donor site on the back of my thigh was really starting to hurt...when my nurse took the dressing off it was pretty clearly infected! With pseudomonas to be presise.
  This meant I had to have betadine soaked gauze and a new dressing put on it and more antibiotics! Betadine either is iodine or has iodine in it (I cant remember!) but that means its bright orange and soaks through everything!
DRIVE SAFE, George xxx

Skin Graft Number One...

  Thursday 23rd August (My first full day on the military trauma ward) it is safe to say I didn't really know what my injuries were. I think I was told in brief detail but it didn't go in and they tend to just say things like 'you're very poorly' when you've been through something so severe and clearly wont be able to understand yet. Also at this point I knew we had been in a motorbike accident that a driver had hit us at the island but no idea that I had been driven over and dragged 10 metres and had no memory at all.
  That afternoon my mum went home to sleep and Joss (my boyfriend and the bike rider) and Rhianna (his sister and my friend) were with me when a woman came into my room. I remember this clearly - she did not introduce herself and she was with a few students, she said some crap and then said ''So we're getting you in for your skin graft tomorrow''. The minute she said that sentence I went into massive panic. I couldn't breathe I started asking what she was talking about that I had no idea I was having any operations and she said ''yes you need a skin graft on your back from where you were stuck to the cars exhaust pipe'' This is where consultants and doctors fail. I had NO idea I had been under the car at this point, NO idea I even had a burn let alone how severe, NO idea I was having any operations. Then she tried to claim it had been decided on friday (IMPOSSIBLE my accident happened on sunday 2 days AFTER friday). After waking up in ITU I was terrified of even falling asleep the thought of being put under was more horrifying for me than I can even explain.
  During this panic attack she just left and luckily my wonderful nurse Laura came in, I was in an awful state crying and screaming yet trapped in my body unable to move. She assured me that I had to give consent and so I could refuse but I really needed the operation, that waking up wouldnt be like in ITU (ive never had an op or even been in hospital before this).
   I didn't agree/sign to the operation until I was in the anaesthetic room, I pressed my morphine PCA the whole way down hoping i would fall asleep before they could put me under. The assistant in there was wonderful she held my hand and stroked my head like i was a vulnerable child. I didn't feel myself falling asleep next thing I new I was opening my eyes in recovery. I remember I couldnt move (combination of my injuries anyway and the general anaesthetic wearing off) but I managed to say 'thank you for looking after me' to the recovery nurse I felt so thankful and vulnerable.
  I had a Split Thickness Skin Graft because they can cover a larger area. The skin was taken from the back of my right thigh using what is essentially a peeler (which as a wound itself is so painful) and literally stapled over my burn (with a little more complexity!). I had a NPWT or Vacuum dressing placed over it, applying a vacuum through a special sealed dressing attatched to a tube and a container box. The continued vacuum draws out fluid (gross!) from the wound and increases blood flow to the area. I also had my shoulder, hip, chest and head wounds washed and dressed and my hair properly shaved to keep my head injury more safe.
 I'm going to attatch some photos of skin graft 'implements' and the NPWT dressings THEY ARE NOT ME THEY ARE EXAMPLES FROM GOOGLE hopefully they wont upset anyone!
DRIVE SAFE, George xxx

                Example of a vacuum dressing - this person has a knee injury mine was obviously on my back.

                                  Example of the box and tube attatched to you and the dressing.

                                   How the donor skin is taken for applictation to the burn/wound.

INJURIES...

I thought I would add a basic list of all my injuries for anyone interested...

1. Broken Left Femur (thigh) - snapped in half and flipped over itself requiring bone removal and plates and screws.
2. Shattered Pelvis - Six breaks around the pelvis in the pelvic ring and an acetabular fracture on the right side (the socket of the hip joint which is broken when the head of the femur is forced into it) which I now know to be quite rare and usually requires hip replacement in the future...
3. Sacral fracture - Fractures of the sacrum (base of the spine above the tail bone)
4. Spinal fracture -  Fracture of the lumbar 5 section of the spine.
5. Road Burns - I aquired second degree road burns to my right shoulder, right hip, chest and right side of my head from being dragged by the car. These went through my leather jacket and jeans. My hip had to be stitched shut and the skin at the top of the burn was completley open.
6. Broken right wrist - Only acknowledged 3 weeks after the accident.
7. Right anterior clavicular dislocation - Dislocated collar bone (same as Joss's inury) also only ackowleged weeks after the accident.
8. Lascerated Liver - My liver was literally burst as my liver consultant put it...
9. Split Nose - The left half of my nose was ripped away and amazingly stitched back on
10. Deviated Septum - the middle part of the nose has been bent out of shape from the force
11. Hole to left side of chin - Pretty self explanetory, from the chin strap of my helmet being pulled off with force. (if we had tightened the strap that day as we nearly did, my aw would of been pulled off my face)
12. Detatched Lip - My lower lip was ripped away from my gums
13. Full thickness Burn to my Back - My back was stuck to the cars exhaust pipe leaving me with a full thickness burn which needed grafts.
14. Deep Grazing - To my cheeks, arms and legs.
15. Both Lungs filled with fluid - Had lung drains put into both lungs. 
16. Black eyes - Not very significant but hey I've never had black eyes before!   
17. Fractured Jaw - Acknowledged 4 months after the crash when I returned to the maxillofacial team because I still had a lot of pain chewing (no wonder) and the lovely doctor had another look at my initial MRI and CT scans focusing on my jaw.

DRIVE SAFE, George xxx