Friday, October 31, 2008 - 11:03 a.m.

I could have dressed up as my leg for Halloween...
(It's pretty scary, dont'cha think?)

Instead, I played for the All Saints Vigil Mass with several of my dedicated choir members.

Crease of knee (below) is starting to heal in the center, but is spreading towards the triangular wound on the side of my leg. I'm afraid these are domed to join eventually...

Wounds on the side of my leg have joined now.

I should mention that allowing these wounds to be exposed to open air like this is extremely painful. Until the evening of Sunday, 11/2/08 I couldn't do this for more than about 1 minute without my leg burning severely and feeling as though the skin around the wounds were "pulling." They also weeped copiously when exposed to the air. From about 10/27 through 11/4, I primarily kept hydrogel dressings on them almost continually (against Emory's advice) because they were the most comfortable dressings I've tried so far.

I am still using Xclair cream and my manuka honey, which now burns a LOT when I put it on, but later feels much better than if I just use XClair. I only needed to change the hydrogel dressings about 2-3 times per day as opposed to the honey/Telfa pad dressings that I was changing about twice as often. The Telfa pad dressings were also much more labor intensive to prepare and get uncomfortable as they dry out/bunch up around my knee.