So, about soaking that dressing off... much easier said than done. The thing seemed cemented in place. The skin graft is very close to the ear that we're supposed to keep dry. Doctors suggested we put a cup over his ear during bathtime, so we created the special head gear that you see above. It stayed on his head for about 2 minutes. I don't think we'll be patenting it anytime soon.With a cup over his ear we had Kai lay back in the water with the skin graft submerged and the ear just above the water line. In our first try, we were able to remove a 1/2" x 2" piece of dressing. In later attempts, we tried this new and improved headgear (the top of a sippy cup taped over his ear):
Kai quickly got tired of this, so we tackled it every other day. We talked with doctors who suggested working the edges with a Q-tip soaked in hydrogen peroxide. Really, really tedious. Here's what's left of the dressing as of Sunday, Feb 8:
It looks pretty good and you can even see hair growing back the skin graft region.
Hi! We'll be very interested in following Kai's progress. Natalie still talks about him every time we go to "school". She says she's going to see Pam and Kai and gets very excited when we see him on the playground :-)
ReplyDelete--Andrea, John, and Natalie