Denise Shore was the sometimes naughty girl next door in the TV series, "School Days". Denise liked to party, hung over she was nearly impossible to work with. Finally the cost of having her on a set outweighed her appeal to the viewers.
Friday
Friday was more therapy. Denise felt more like eating and the hospital food actually tasted good. The doctor came in late in the day. He told Denise that he was going to check her stump.
“Must I look at it?”
“If you like. If not, you can turn your head while I do the dressing.”
“Let me think about it. Can Carol stay?”
“If you like.”
“I do. I am really scared. Can you hold my hand?”
“Sure.”
The doctor carefully unhooked the belt that held the plaster cast on her stump and slid the cast off. He slid his hand under the stump to support it while he placed the pylon and the cast on the bed. With the stump free he held it up so he could examine it.
“It is healing nicely. There isn’t any infection, no excessive swelling, no excessive drainage. All is good.”
Denise had at first turned her head away but when she felt the cast slip off her stump she turned and watched in an almost detached way. When he finished she said. “It looks so puffy compared to Carol’s stump.”
“Carol’s stump has had years to shrink. Yours still has fluid from the surgery. We need to start shrinking it.”
“What do you use to do that?”
“You wrap it at night. In the morning if the cast is loose you put on a stump sock. You continue adding stump socks as needed. When you get to six we make a new cast.”
“What is a stump sock?”
“It is a sock that pulls over the stump and takes up space to make a socket fit even as the stump shrinks. As it shrinks you add stump socks to make it smaller.”
“Can I touch it?”
“Sure. Just don’t touch the incision or the places the connectors come through the end until they heal.”
“OK.”
With both hands she lifted her stump and looked it over. She massaged it from her groin to near the incision.
After a couple minutes the doctor said, “We need to get this cast back on. We don’t want it to swell.”
“OK.”
As he was putting the cast back on her stump she asked. “Will my stump look like Carol’s? Hers is so nice. Mine looks puffy and the scar is so big.”
“It will get nice like hers. The incision will fade like hers has. You will have a scar but it will become less pronounced. The puffiness will go away as it heals.”
“What about the end? It isn’t as rounded as hers.”
“It will get rounded much like hers with a couple exceptions. Her thighs are a little heavier than yours. So your stump will be thinner. Your stump will have the five indentations in the end. These are where the connectors are embedded.”
“How do they work?”
“Carol’s prosthesis is kept on by either suction or a belt. You can definitely use a belt and may be able to wear a suction socket and you have a third option that provides a more positive connection that Carol doesn’t have. It can be directly connected to the bone. If the prosthesis has a special knee with ability to connect to your muscles you will be able to move the lower leg. There are significant advantages to being able to move the knee and there are advantages of the more solid AK connection. You have all of the advantage of the AK and some of the ones of the BK without the disadvantages of either. I am sure Carol will agree.”
“For sure. I have a friend that is an LAK, RBK. She has told me that if she could move the lower leg on the LAK it would be the better leg.”
“So I can be like an AK or a BK?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“Now we need to get you set up to be able to use those muscles in a day or two. There is a device that we will put on the end of your stump to monitor you moving the muscles to tone them. Your stump is not ready right now but it will be in a couple of days.”
Denise Chapter 01: Success in Hollywood
Denise Chapter 29: Creating a Dry Denise
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