Environmental Issues by Mahopac Central School District

This is 2 days post-injury, after the blisters were debrided (cut off). Foot is very swollen and mildly infected. I REALLY wish I would have taken a picture of the blisters, they were about an inch thick and covered the entire bottom of the foot, plus the toes.

This is 9 days. Note black tissue forming at edges of wound, and white areas near heel which are the 3rd degree burns. Also note the blisters on the toes which are more visible now. I think this is when it looked the worst.

Had to add this for the fun factor. Dog bite and frostbite together! This is also 9 days into healing. Eric is doing hyperbaric oxygen therapy 5 days/week at this point to keep infection away, reduce swelling, and speed healing.

16 days post-injury. The rest of the toes have been debrided and the big toe is well on its way to healing. The more severely burned areas have turned black. The black area does not feel like a normal scab- it's sort of leathery. Done with hyperbarics.

1 month post-inury. Medial areas have new pink skin and black areas are slowly receding. Lateral edge (near the outside edge of black tissue) is irritated and red, might be mildly infected since he d/c antibiotics last week. Note my little Shizzy dog in the background!

5 weeks. You can see the black areas sloooooowly receding and being replaced first by the red granulation tissue, which is the immature skin cells, then eventually layers of pink normal skin build on top of that. The black area is starting to look drier and crispier (for lack of a better term). Hopefully that means that it's thinning out because viable skin underneath is pushing it out.

Close-up shot taken by Jacob at 5 wks.. It really does look like something that got left on the barbecue a bit too long.

6 weeks and 2 days. Note the upper black section has been removed by Dr.... good granulation tissue underneath, hooray! Bottom black part is not doing much and Dr. said this week to re-think skin graft.

7 weeks. Note how the black area at the bottom is starting to narrow and turn yellow at the sides, good! Since this was the most severe area, it's really encouraging to see it making progress on its own.

7 weeks again, you can really see how much tissue has completely healed in this one. The whole pink area was burn.

8 weeks. Wound care Dr. removed a lot of the black scabby stuff today- that is the yellow sloughy areas you see.

8 weeks. Believe it or not, this is progress.

8 wks. Yes, this is what you think it is. Eric got so attached to his scabs that he brought them home in a specimen cup. (the knife is for size comparison- we didn't do a home job)

10 wks. Foot is inflamed and red because Eric decided he should walk on it for a day since he's going to have surgery anyway, right ? Wrong.... Yellow areas are fat, red is granulation tissue.

10 wks- at this angle you can really see how much tissue has completely healed. The remaining tissue is progressing very slowly compared to the rest of the foot and the toes, since deeper layers of tissue were damaged.

This is the donor site on Eric's Thigh, it is 7 inches long. It looks shiny cause it's covered in a plastic bandage

wide shot of thigh

Foot is splinted for 1 week- surgeon will take it off next Monday and see if the graft is taking.

6 days post-graft. Gauze pads were stapled TO the foot- how rude!! This is the gauze/staple-removing process.

Now removing about half of the staples that attach the graft to the foot. Other half will come out next week.

And here's the glorious graft, looking like a good graft should. Big fat sigh of relief.

Eric's very sexy leg. His skin started reacting to the adhesive and is all welted up around the donor site.

Extreme close-up of the extreme foot makeover. (for those of you who desire more detail) The criss-cross pattern is the skin- it gets run through a press-type machine that stamps it into the mesh pattern. This gives the skin the ability to drain out blood from underneath, increasin the chances of adhesion

19 days post op- WE HAVE SKIN !! Note the area to the right (top of the wound) where it appears white. This is a thin layer of skin, hooray yippee!

19 days post op again, heel area. The little islands of white puffy tissue are more skin!! The little red buds are granulation tissue which are the buds which skin cells will proliferate from. Black around the edges is normal- just dead skin where the surgery was cauterized.

21 days. Started using an herbal wound salve and a wheatgrass juice spray extract directly on the wound the day before. The difference in the amount of pink skin is pretty amazing when you compare this to the previous picture 2 days ago.

25 days. continue to use herbals and Eric has done 2 hyperbaric dives. There is now more mature pink epithelium than there is immature red granulation tissue, and the black dead skin around the edges of the wound is falling off.

25 days. Look how much the really deep indented area has healed here compared to 4 days ago, and when you compare it to the photo at 19 days it's freakin amazing!

31 days. Love that pretty pink skin.

31 days. That deep area mid-foot is going to be the last to heal, it still has a bit of tissue to fill in.

7 wks post-op. So close! The remaining areas are pretty shallow. Have follow up appt with the surgeon in 2 days to see if Eric can start bearing full weight on it again.

Eric's favorite hyperbaric chamber.

Fasten your seat belt...sorta looks like the beginning of Space Mountain