Zyle continues to amaze us with his progress. He's such a whirlwind that it's as challenging to get a shot showing his wounds as it is to put ointment on them. There's a little spot of stitches showing in this one, northwest of his ear. The ear itself seems to have been nicked more recently than the surgery. The stitches are dissolvable, incidentally, so we won't have to go through the trauma of getting them out.
A loose end: The bloodwork that delayed us from having surgery when originally scheduled. I spoke with the director of the blood bank at the hospital on Monday, and she explained a few things. The most salient point is that the factor Zyle has is not something that is normally marked on bags of blood sitting on a shelf. But it's common enough that they just need to special order it from the Red Cross. The issue with the two designated donor bags was that one of us matched (we don't know which of us, and neither did the blood bank director), but the surgeon wanted two units. So they needed a second. (I've also heard that when there is designated donor blood, sometimes they want to mix it with a second donor's in certain situations; don't know if that was what was going on here.) Zyle's is anti-M. He did get some blood during the operation.
So this cleared up several things. It wasn't that neither of us matched. It wasn't that they had to ship it in from a long distance. The explanation was much more simple, that getting enough of the blood with the right antigens (or is it anti-antigens? and does that make them 'gens'?) meant special ordering it. The blood bank director said if we hadn't done designated donations, we'd never even have known about the issue. They would have just ordered the subtype needed. I presume she's thinking this is in situations in which the lab work is actually ordered as it is supposed to be during pre-op!
Our follow-up appointments are currently scheduled for Chrismas Eve and New Year's Eve. Apparently there isn't any availability to get both docs on the same day. When talking to them in person, they nonchalantly say, "just arrange to see us both at the same time," as if this is something that's even possible. They work in neighboring buildings, so it would have been nice to have both the same morning. They also preceded this "schedule us both at the same time" with wildly different time frames for the follow-up visits. One said 8 days and the other said 3 weeks. With a relatively common surgery, and surgeons who are accustomed to working with one another, seems like the same information ought to roll off their tongues.
My in-laws left yesterday. They were such a huge help to us here, holding down the fort in addition to taking care of Jex--and our pets! They did laundry, fixed dishwashers and dead car batteries, installed shower massages, fielded phone calls, accepted donated food and balloons.
Zyle seems back to his old self, with just a few hints that he had major surgery less than a week ago.
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