Unstitched

(Caution: Those with weak stomachs should be warned that this post includes photos of a healing surgical wound.  Nothing too graphic, but maybe too much for the extremely squeamish.)

Faithful Readers, you'll recall that Hillary underwent plastic surgery a few weeks ago and that the surgeon told me how to remove the stitches myself three weeks afterward.  Well, today marks three weeks later.

Whereas Susan and I had expected Hillary to be grateful for the removal of her large birthmark, she was actually sad: it was a part of her that had always been with her, and it made her unique, especially in comparison to her sisters, to whom she is otherwise so similar.  After the initial visits to the offices of the dermatologist and the plastic surgeon, Hillary started referring to her birthmark as Bertrude, thanked it for being a faithful companion, told it that she would miss it, and started counting down the days until they would have to say goodbye to each other.  Kinda tugged at her parents' hearts a little!

Well, ever since the surgery, she's been counting down the days until the removal of the bandages and the stitches.  After removing the birthmark and stitching the incision, the plastic surgeon added strips of tape to draw together the skin from either side of the wound and then covered the whole shebang with a large rectangle of transparent surgical tape, which kept the surrounding skin in place and prevented it from bunching up or pulling apart whenever Hillary lifted her arm or turned at her waist.  It also flattened out and kept visible the few drops of blood that escaped the cut right after surgery so that the site of the incision has looked more hideous than it really is.

(Imagine putting one tiny drop of ketchup on a white kitchen counter and then covering it with a sheet of clear plastic wrap and pressing that flat against the counter . . . and then leaving it there for three weeks.  That little drop of ketchup would appear to be huge, and it would probably darken and get a bit crusty over three weeks.  That's what we saw on Hillary's side.)

This evening Hillary and I went into the bathroom to uncover the wound, remove the stitches, see her "new skin," and start life without Bertrude:

Here's what it looked like three weeks ago after the surgery.  Tiny drops of blood appear to be kinda nasty beneath the see-through patch of surgical tape keeping the surrounding skin in place.

The plastic surgeon warned me that the clear adhesive patch would loosen around the edges over subsequent weeks and instructed me to trim it off as it pulled away from Hillary's skin.  This was Hillary today.  Notice how little of the surgical patch is left . . . and how discolored it has become.

In the bathroom, we began by pulling off the remainder of the adhesive patch from over the incision.  Despite my assurances to the contrary, Hillary was expecting stitch removal to be painful, so she whimpered and teared up and gasped as I loosened the edges of the bandage and she felt her skin being tugged.  Lightweight.

The stitches themselves looked like fishing line and were difficult to see.  There was one plastic-y string sticking out from either end of the incision and one from above the middle of it.  I used tweezers to pull each stitch away from her skin and cuticle scissors to snip it off.  Hillary did not wince or make a peep at this stage of the process; she basically couldn't feel a thing.

Here's the finished product.  What was once a long oval mole that grew as Hillary did is now a line on the left side of her ribcage.  Looks like a pretty clean scar to me that will only improve with time as the redness disappears and the scar fades a bit.  She may miss Bertrude for now, but as she gets older she should come to appreciate having just a faint scar there instead of a large dark nevus.