PART 6: The Repair

The surgeon came back with a smile and said they had gotten it all and would now close the wound. When they were ready, the nurse came in to get me. We went back into the first operating room. The doctor came in almost immediately and I expressed concern about having the needle in my ear, but he said I wouldn't feel it. At first I thought it was just something he said to all, but the truth is I really didn't. I don't know if I was so full of Lidocaine in the face that I was numb all over, or if it was the Valium. While waiting, I had asked to take another Valium and he approved. His nurse made a template of the wound and then they drew the template on the inside of my ear. The doctor had looked carefully at my face and both ears, and had decided that the best place to take the skin from was the flat inner part of the right ear, same side as the wound on the nose. He said the color and the skin matched perfectly.

They injected the Lidocaine in my nose again, and in my ear. All in all, I must have had about 60 shots of Lidocaine or so. The ear was numb and the doctor went in and scraped off the skin. I could not feel anything, other than the pressure of his hand holding my ear (or the nurse's hand), kind of pulling on the back part to give them room to work. More unsettling, perhaps, was that I could hear every last little scrape. Once he got the tissue, he immediately went to my nose and place it on the wound. He said it fit perfectly.

Then the sewing began. At this time, I felt more activity on my nose than before, as the string would pull when he stitched. My husband said he used a rounded hook type of needle, but I could tell he was comfortable and confident, and he was done pretty quickly. He used dissolving stitches all around the patch. He asked if I wanted to see, and I did. The stitches were black and went all around the wound. Later he stitched some gauze onto the wound to hold it tightly in place. This concept freaked me out a bit. They put lots of tape on it, and they taped up my ear.

I was told not to touch anything, not to get it wet, not to bend over, not to lift anything over ten pounds, to go home and rest. I was given a prescription for antibiotics and one for Tylenol with codeine. I was to return in two days (yesterday) to have them remove the stitched-on gauze and for them to check how the graft was going.