November 09, 2002

Popeye Arm


For those of you who've been wondering how my brother-in-law Steve is doing, I've updated the webpage about him. Again, I strongly caution you if you have a weak stomach for nasty medical pictures. His arm was crushed in a machine accident at work on August 19, and I took pictures for him at the beginning of September and posted them. At the bottom of that page there's an update, along with pictures just taken last night. Like I said, don't go there if you're squeamish.

For those of you who'd rather skip the images, let me just say that prayer and talented doctors can work miracles. He's doing great! Here's the text from the website:
Steve's arm looks so much better now! He had the hardware removed some time ago and had a skin graft done. They took the skin from his upper arm (the very pink skin you see is new growth at the site where they removed the top layer of skin for the graft).

He said the place they removed the skin from hurt worse than his whole arm hurt, ever. Can you imagine? You know how it hurts when you get a bad abrasion - ouch! As you can see, though, things are healing up really well. There's still a lot of swelling (we jokingly call it his Popeye arm), but he continues to regain use of his arm and fingers.

The scar tissue at his elbow limits his movement, so he'll have to endure a few more surgeries as they remove/modify scar tissue to allow more movement for his arm.

Like Sands Through the Hourglass...


Actually, it's Sand in the Gears I'm reading lately. This is some good stuff! From politics to his four-year-old's epiphany and resultant curiosity about breastfeeding, he kept me reading - and thinking.

P.S. Waaay on the other end of the breastfeeding spectrum is this.Yipes!