Chaz 2-14-11

So I know you've all noticed I've been a little busy. I have been maximizing my time with Chaz everyday. We've had a lot of awesome vistors, but only when Chaz is up to it. The time spread out between surgeries has been awesome for him. He has gained so much energy. Today we found out that everything looks great for this surgery tomorrow. All of his counts are up and the surgeons are ready. I walked down the hall for something and when I came back there were a gazillion doctors (I call them Chaz's minions) standing in the hallway pow-wowing about him. It was quite comical. Here's what I learned.

1. Chaz's elbow was broken into 7 places and he is missing a few inches of bone. This was from the blast.
2. He is also missing a pretty good piece of skin around his elbow.
3. They have already put a rod in his radius (for those of you who are like me, in his forearm).
4. They will be using a plastic plate to fuse his elbow together for the time being.
5. They will be removing a patch of skin from his back and then attaching this skin to his elbow.
6. There's a 95% success rate for this surgery.
7. It will take 6-8 hours for the surgery.
8. He will stay in ICU for 3-5 days after his surgery.
9. The skin flap is very sensitive. If anything begins to go wrong. They will rush him back to surgery to immediately repair it.
10. In a few months, once the skin flap has healed then they will go in remove the fusion plate and then use a cadaver elbow to hopefully give him a lot more function.
11. He has almost full use of his right hand, wrist and shoulder. We just need that elbow to get with the program.
12. His legs loook great and are DONE!!!!

I met all of the doctors who will be touching my hubby. They all took the time to explain everything to us and made sure we understood what was going on. Once again Walter Reed is amazing!!! Please, please lift him up in prayer! Once we get past this surgery, he should only have a few left.
=) Jessica