Happy 25th Flap-iversary to Me

[thehipcrip]

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the trapezius muscle flap surgery that probably saved my life.

It was July 1984, and I had been a patient in the old University of Michigan Hospital (the one with no AC) for close to five weeks. Even though the wound from my anterior fusion surgery was closing up nicely, the incision from the posterior fusion surgery (C2-T4) the month before wouldn't heal. The same area had been opened twice before and been subjected to massive doses of radiation due to an intermedullary astrocytoma, and the skin was just too damaged from that to recover.

I was also plagued by a dural tear that wouldn't heal (for the same reasons) and was leaking CSF through the exterior wound. A surgery the week before to try to close the dura and the placement of a spinal catheter to try to reduce CSF pressure had both failed to help. I'd already contracted, and was being treated for bacterial meningitis. Things were pretty bleak.

Thank goodness for the docs from Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Working under the theory that closing the external wound completely would create an environment in which the torn dura could heal, the surgeons removed my entire left trapezius muscle -- including the skin and blood vessels -- and placed in on top of the incision over my spine. They covered the donor site where the trapezius muscle had been with skin grafted from the back of my left thigh.

Their plan worked. Their "trap flap" successfully closed the external incision, stopped the CSF leak, and allowed the dura to heal itself. And despite two areas that were touch and go for the first week or so, the skin grafts took. In just two weeks after the trap flap surgery, I was able to come off the Stryker fram I'd been on since early June and get into a halo vest that had been modified to prevent it from touching or putting pressure on the still healing skin grafts.

Twenty five years later, the sites look like this (the burn scar-looking area on the left are the skin grafts covering the donor site, and the 'football' shaped lump is the trapezius muscle flap).




Thanks to the brilliance of those P&RS docs, I've had, for the most part, a terrific 25 years. The after-effects from the surgery (increased nerve pain, the graft develops pressure sores quickly because there's no padding -- muscle or fat -- between the skin and the scapula, limited mobility in my left arm, and the creepy feeling as though someone is rubbing my skeleton if the graft area is touched) are a small price to pay.

It really is a happy flap-iversary.

[wtf]

Am happy the flap worked - do you now have to sleep on your stomach so ya don't get a pressure sore.

[arndog]

Cheers, THC.

[McDuff]

Glad you found Docs who thought outside the box and fixed ya up. You were a mess.

[thehipcrip]

Thanks for taking the time to read this WTF, arndog and McDuff. It was more of a cathartic exercise I did for me than anything else. Your responses really touched me.

As far as stomach sleeping, WTF, the front and back fusions up to C2-3 made that impossible -- I can't turn my head far enough to either side to lay prone. I sleep sitting up (due to lung problems) with my back against a pile of pillows, which the graft area tolerates amazingly well. What the graft doesn't like is me going out -- too much time sitting in cars, planes, and other places I need to be out of my chair and in anything with a high back pisses it off but good.

[Mona~on~wheels]

AWESOME! THAT'S SO WONDERFUL THC!!!!!!!

I'm so HAPPY for you! Love your attitude. Wish we could spread it around.

(HUGS) Mona

[Lola_wheelie]

that's awesome, thc
i agree with everything mona said!
hope you had a great day

lola

[teena]

Glad this worked out for you...please take care!

Teena

[thehipcrip]

Thank you for the good wishes, sweet ladies of CC -- Misses Mona, Lola and Teena!