Hi Bryansay welcome to the forum. I noted a post similar to your which is only 3 days old so fairly current and I have sent you another post with the link that you need only click to read this. Best wishes Gail x
I just had that 6 weeks ago. The cut a section of your jaw out, they take a length of the fibula bone from one of your legs, and use it to reconstruct the section of jaw, they also put in titanium plate to hold it all together until it heals, the plate stays forever unless it causes you any troubles. If your cancer is in the tissue of your mouth, they also take tissue from the same leg to replace the tissue they cut out of your mouth. This is a deep wound, for me it looked about 5mm deep, and they take a very slim slither of skin from elsewhere the line it with skin graft. Believe it or not, You'll probably wake up from surgery with very little pain from jaw, and it will stay that way, but you will take pain killers for the leg, and the debridement and cleaning and special dressings will go on for a couple of months before you can go dressing free, You will have a trac tube in your neck when you wake, and it will stay there until they are sure any swelling wont interfere with your breathing. You'll have a feeding tube up your nose. a catheter up the old fella, couple of drainage tubes in the leg hooked up to vaccum bottles or pumps, another couple of drainage tubes in your neck, couple of IV's. Oh, and supplemental oxygen tube. Altogether I counted ten tubes I was tethered by. But by day 3 that was down to 6, and day 5 it was 3. If there is no complications and healing goes well, you'll be going home in 10 to 14 days.
Brilliant explanation OzStu; all pretty much the same with me over three years ago, however I was in ICU for a couple of days (of which I can’t remember a thing?) and when put on the ward the only tube I had was one in my neck from dissection and nasal feeding tube. No dressings at all on my leg my hospital prefer the donor site open to the air apparently, however I did get a small blood clot in my leg and an infection in the wound - I was in hospital just short of three weeks. We are all a tadge different with the healing.
I healed so fast, they were going to let me go home after 9 days, but then, they noticed saliva leaking slightly for a line of stitches under jaw. Saliva was leaking all the way through from the flap join inside, the the stitches outside. They said the saliva could dissolve tissue and cause the flap to fail. So they had to put my on drugs to suppress saliva production and go back to feeding tube for a week while it healed up. So I was on for 16 days.
