I'm free! I can take showers. I can wear tennis shoes. I can walk around all I want. I can drive. It's like I had month long forced vacation and it sucked. Now I can't wait to mow the lawn and run arrends.

I have new skin! Well, it's not really new since I already had it on my thigh. My skin graft surgery was on August 9th and I think it went well. It took a little over an hour and I was in recovery for about 45 minutes. Then I stayed in the hospital until around 10am the next day. I used a walker with little tennis balls on the legs. I looked like an old woman. My foot didn't hurt at all but my thigh sure did. It burned. And my hips hurt from laying in the same position. Dr. Burry, my surgeon, said that some doctors would keep me in the hospital for 3 to 5 days. I was glad to get out of there in one night. They have no concept of night in hospitals...or that you should be quiet at night...or that your "vitals" can wait until the morning...or that it's difficult to sleep with the light on and I can't get up to turn it off...or that if the door was shut when you came in, you should shut it when you leave. Things like that. I do appreciate all that they did for me, but I couldn't take much more "care".

For one week I was not allowed to walk at all and I was supposed to keep my foot up as much as possible. If blood went to my foot it could go between the graft and the tissue and cause it to balloon up and detach. So I was obedient. It sucked. Angela gave me a boot she used after her ankle surgery so that saved me some money and protected my foot from the children, the dog, and myself. So when I went for my first follow-up, Dr. Burry said it was 90-95% attached, which is great because it's never 100%. The only parts that didn't take were in the grooves between my toes. I don't see how it would stay attached in that area anyways. Also at that appointment he changed my dressing on my thigh. He pulled off the 8"x6" bandage and then the small gauze that was stuck to the wound. It felt like they used a blow torch to get it all off. Imagine that it was really bad and you will be close to how bad it really was. I almost grabbed a fist-full of the nurse. The whole area burned for awhile. They put some wet and dry gauze on it and then taped it up with some useless white tape. I sware this nurse thinks that tape is the answer for everything, but in reality it's worthless. The wet gauze made the tape even worse so by that evening the tape was off (besides the fact that they didn't even give me extra tape for changing it). Jason ran to Walmart to get me a wrap instead. Now I am supposed to change my own thigh dressing every day. So the next day it took me over 30 minutes to get it off. It was stuck and very painful. Each touch felt like I was jabbing a needle into my thigh. It takes a certain mental toughness to inflict pain on yourself and at that moment I was weak. I thought I was done with painful dressing changes. I was mentally drained from before (I changed the dressing on the hole in my foot everyday for three weeks). So I had a breakdown this time. I was not expecting so much pain. I really felt like I couldn't do this anymore but I finished it and rewrapped it, dreading the next day. But the next day it came off without much pain at all. How odd! And it was easy the next day as well. That's a huge miracle.

So I went in for the next follow-up yesterday. Burry was not there so I saw someone else, Dr. Schymik. He changed my foot dressing. It smelled (embarrassing but I have to be honest). He gave me some non-stick gauze stuff and said I could start changing my foot dressing myself and now I can do my best to clean it. I haven't tried it yet to see just how "non-stick" it really is. But the graft still looked good and he said, "You can walk." What? I can walk? The thought, or question really, kept going through my head and I think out of my mouth a few times. Just an hour ago I couldn't put my foot down and now you're saying I can walk. It was a little hard to believe at first because he wasn't Dr. Burry and the whole graft tearing off thing makes me nervous anyways. So when he was done, I stepped down and felt needles on my heel. I can walk? So I put half my weight on my foot and half on the crutches at first. But by the time I was home I was walking just fine. And I didn't sit for a long time. Thanks again to Angela for the boot. That really helps. So when Jason got home and saw me standing he was a little overwhelmed. He was tired of being two people.

So thanks to everyone who helped me through all this: the people who drove me places, the people who babysat the kids, the people who gave me food, the people who kept me company, the people who prayed for me. You know who you are. Thanks.

Now just pray that we sell our house (if we're even supposed to).

I probably should have started blogging about this long ago because now it feels like I'm too far behind to catch up. I'll sum up. On June 30th I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. It was a small spot (.4 mm) on the top of my right foot. For about a week we didn't know how bad it was and that was a little scary. Skin cancer is the most easily spread cancer (according to what I read). I went to the surgeon, Dr. Burry, the next Thursday or Friday and found out it was too tiny to have spread or caused any damage. Ordinarily, I would be paranoid without further testing, but I think I believe him. I can't really afford to not believe him right now. Anyways, I had a wide margin excision to remove the remaining melanoma on July 20th. They removed a cirle around the mole that is 3 cm around. The doctor said after the surgery that if the melanoma had been .58 mm higher he would have amputated my toe. Scary. In case you haven't noticed, there's not a lot of skin on top of your foot. It's not very stretchy either. So if 3 cm is removed it won't close. So that's about the summary up to where I am now. I have a large hole in my foot. Everyday I peel off the dry dressing by putting saline solution on it. It still doesn't like to come off without a fight some days. Then I put new wet gauze in the hole and dry gauze over it. Then I wrap it with a dirty, stinky brown bandage thing that you normally use for sprains. I wish I had a new one for each day or two but I have to keep using the same one. Some times I can walk and feel fine and sometimes it's terrible. The last two days have been really good. But because it's on my right foot I can't drive. So I'm trapped at home for awhile. An interesting side note: when I went to the surgeon 2 days after the surgery to have my dressing removed for the first time, it was really gross. It was so much bigger than I expected and there is no muscle on top of the foot to hide the tendons and stuff so we saw it all. I got a little woozy. Jason went all the way and passed out. Good times. I have a skin graft surgery planned for Tuesday, August 9th. They will take some skin from my thigh to cover it. I'll stay over night and then wear some boot for awhile to keep from moving my foot. And that's what I did on my summer vacation.