Good News!! The latest update on Pat..

To start things off, the ride home went pretty well. Jerry and Nadine, our saving graces, got to Sioux Falls on Sunday. Pat had an appt Mon morning at McKennan Hospital to get his wound dressing changed (this has to be done every 2-3 days), and it was looking really good. Once we were done there, we hit the road. Pat, Olivia, and I had all come down with bad colds over the weekend, and we had Olivia in the Dr on Sunday-turns out she had an ear infection-so I'm sure it was a longer drive for our friends than it was for us. We made it back to Albuquerque on Tuesday night, facing a longer road ahead of us than the one just traveled. Today we had Pat's first appt at New Mexico Ortohopedics. We were quite pleased with our "second opinion" here. This surgeon advised that we should skip the whole plastic surgery procedure involving the free flap/skin graft. He thought this was just an extra step we could definitely avoid. He does mostly trauma cases and very rarely has needed to get a plastic surgeon involved for this type of procedure. He thought the wound was healing very nicely as is and having the wound vac was helping avoid the whole thing. He of course gave us the option of going through the plastic surgery if we wanted to, but we opted not to. As far as replacing the tendon, he said that the wound will take a couple more weeks to heal with the wound vac and this should produce enough scar tissue to function as a tendon. Pat will then go through some intense physical therapy to see how much function he has on his own. He may have to have small incisions made to help stretch the scar tissue. If that doesn't work or isn't enough, then a cadaver tendon may be used. With this route, Pat is looking at about a 4 month recovery versus a 6 to 9 month recovery, so we are crossing our fingers and praying that this procedure will work. He also thought that Pat should have about 80% usage back when it's all done with. We really liked the surgeon today and are confident in him that this is the best decision for us. We are so thrilled with the news and has taken alot of stress off the both of us! I will keep everyone updated on further progress. For now, I will turn the blog back over to Olivia...she has alot of catching up to do on herself!!