Having Fifty-Five Stitches Out Hurts!

Just over a week after coming out of hospital, and two weeks after my operation, I returned to the plaster room to have my stitches removed and new plaster casts put on. I was quite nervous about it as I've never had stitches out before and was worried it would be painful. I was also excited to see my feet and pretty excited about getting out of the flat!

We arrived really early and waited for a while in the car park before my dad dropped me outside the door and then went back to park the car. We only had a short wait in the waiting room before they called us in.

The first thing was having the plaster cast removed, using the special tool. This was very weird and made my feet really tingle and feel quite itchy. We waited a little while for the other plaster technician to return from a meeting and then they took off the dressings and revealed my feet.

I was quite shocked by how gross my feet looked - even worse than the first time I saw them. They had definitely begun to heal but the scabs were pretty disgusting.

Then the stitches were removed. This was very, very sore! To cut each stitch, she had to pull on it to expose enough of the stitch to cut, which meant that the wounds were being pulled too. In some cases, the scab had grown over the stitch and she had to poke into the scab to grab hold of the stitch. I really didn't enjoy it! I had twenty-five stitches on my right foot and thirty on my left. I was rather proud of my fifty-five stitches! I was pleased with how my feet looked after the stitches had been removed - it helped them look less hideous I think!

Then my feet were ready to be re-plastered. The technician explained that because my wounds had not healed brilliantly well, they would be putting special iodine-impregnated dressings on to help prevent any infection and I would also need to return the following week to check how they were getting on. I was a little concerned by this as I was worried that this meant there was a problem, but the technician reassured me and explained that, given the size of the wounds to begin with, they had done very well.

Finally, they applied the plaster and I chose to have red this time as I fancied a change!