91 Days

As of this morning, Parker has been in this hospital for 91 days. He had already been at South Austin Hospital for 14 days before that, so this year he has spent one hundred and five days in a hospital.

He wanted me to put a picture of his wound up here, so that may be coming tomorrow, I just have to think about it first. Actually his wound looks so much better now, I was just comparing yesterdays photo to the one taken on May 16th. The difference is HUGE. If I am figuring it correctly, the wound was about 15" from top to bottom and about 10" from side to side in the beginning. It is now about 10" top to bottom and 7" side to side. The retention sutures are gone, but the scars from them will forever make a bulls eye on his stomach.

In a perfect world, one in which we get to pick the ebb and flow of our lives, we would hope the events going forward would be as follows: 10 - 14 days in rehab (all of this is assuming there are no glitches, no big set backs, nothing unusual that makes us back track), followed by 3 weeks home bound care where a nurse comes each day ~ but he is at home. Then he comes back for the skin graft surgery the first week of August, followed by a one week hospital stay to be sure the graft sets and doesn't get infected, home bound another three weeks, then return to work the 1st of September.

Like I said, in a perfect world this is how we would like it to go. Which would mean we all may get our "normal" lives back sometime early fall.

The other part is, none of us can define "normal" anymore.