A Good Closer
Amacker continues to improve. Yesterday afternoon they closed her abdomen. The doctors said that everything inside is healing well and they don't anticipate having to do any more work in there. (We did jokingly ask if they left anything interesting inside her, but the doctors didn’t think that was very funny. They very quickly responded with how many packs they had put in, and how many they counted while they were taking them out. I asked if they counted people in the room before and after the surgery...)
The next step is to start working on her leg. In preparation for that, they heavily irrigated her leg (washed it out) with saline. They also cut away any dead fleshy bits, and packed the ends of the bones with a cement like substance to fill where the marrow was and stabilize the bones from the inside.
This morning, they are planning to take her to surgery again to put in the hardware that will connect the two parts of her shin bone. I’ll explain more when they’re done (there are several possible options they might take). We also had very detailed conversations with the plastic surgeons who will close the wound. It seems they will need to take some skin from the back of her thigh to cover the wound. They will also pull some of the muscle from the calf around to the front to protect the new hardware.
My father and I will be at the hospital during this surgery (as we are for all of them), and I’ll write when I know how things went. The good news is that she has shown consistent and steady progress every hour.
It is still uncertain when they’ll wake her up. They did bring her into near-consciousness yesterday for a bit, and Dad and Katy Bell both got to see her eyes open. She’s in there…fighting like we all know she can. She still needs assistance breathing, but she is getting stronger and improving every day.
Anyway, it will still probably be at least another 4 days before they wake her up. Our dad plans to stay until the last of her major surgeries is finished. He will then go home to Dallas to take care of some personal business, and then return when they wake her up. It's going to be a long recovery, and we all need to pace ourselves.
The next step is to start working on her leg. In preparation for that, they heavily irrigated her leg (washed it out) with saline. They also cut away any dead fleshy bits, and packed the ends of the bones with a cement like substance to fill where the marrow was and stabilize the bones from the inside.
This morning, they are planning to take her to surgery again to put in the hardware that will connect the two parts of her shin bone. I’ll explain more when they’re done (there are several possible options they might take). We also had very detailed conversations with the plastic surgeons who will close the wound. It seems they will need to take some skin from the back of her thigh to cover the wound. They will also pull some of the muscle from the calf around to the front to protect the new hardware.
My father and I will be at the hospital during this surgery (as we are for all of them), and I’ll write when I know how things went. The good news is that she has shown consistent and steady progress every hour.
It is still uncertain when they’ll wake her up. They did bring her into near-consciousness yesterday for a bit, and Dad and Katy Bell both got to see her eyes open. She’s in there…fighting like we all know she can. She still needs assistance breathing, but she is getting stronger and improving every day.
Anyway, it will still probably be at least another 4 days before they wake her up. Our dad plans to stay until the last of her major surgeries is finished. He will then go home to Dallas to take care of some personal business, and then return when they wake her up. It's going to be a long recovery, and we all need to pace ourselves.
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