Day 7 Post-Op (Sat 13th March)

A week post op and thoughts begin to wander towards how successful I feel things are going so far and how close to my impression everything has gone. Had it not been for the increased pain overnight that led to almost no sleep I would have said it was going well. I have got away with almost no bruising at all, which I am very grateful for, but then I have never been the sort of person who bruises easily.

Today also was the day to remove the final dressing. The pain when I awoke was heavy again in the back of my elbow (8/10) so I took some oramorph. I decided after the oramorph was a good time to try and remove the dressing. I was going fine until I realised that they had actually covered the incision with two dressings and the very sticky edge of the second dressing was directly over the incision. I removed the first dressing no problems, but the second one pulled on the incision a lot and caused rather a lot of pain and made me feel a little iffy. All that remains now are the dissolvable stitches that I’m told will be gone in 1-3 weeks and some more surgical strips.

I went and had a cup of coffee after that, at least the final hurdle was over now, all I can do is work on recovering, and there is no further need to disrupt the wound area.

The new pain in the outside of the elbow continued all day into the evening, but no need for oramorph, I’d say this new pain has levelled off at 5/10, which is still more than I would have hoped at this stage.