Can You Say Latissimus Dorsi ?

This morning I met my plastic (reconstructive) surgeon, Dr. Singh. Very tall, very nice, and armed with a credit card sized digital camera (an Exilim). It's most amusing, what with my photographic bent, but every doctor I've met from the Johns Hopkins team has felt a need to take my picture with a little digital camera. More precisely, they want to take a picture of the lump in my left arm, but I think I'm the only person who doesn't have a picture of my lump. Dr. Singh is the only one who has pictures with my radiation alignment marks showing, though, and he also took a shot from behind (rather like the position demonstrated by the friendly muscle mannequin above, except with my left arm held out parallel to the ground).

Dr. Singh explained what he was going to be doing surgically to repair my arm after Dr. Weber removes the tumor, which in my case means removing the majority of my triceps. Once the tumor is removed, a latissimus dorsi muscle (see red area on muscle mannequin), with blood supply and nerves still attached, and a flap of skin will be lifted from my back and rotated into the place where my triceps used to reside. Then the latissimus muscle will be attached to the long bone of the arm (humerus) and will be positioned to approximate the triceps. Lastly, the skin will be sutured and my arm will have been reconstructed.

All told, the total time of my surgery will probably be somewhere around 6-8 hours. After the surgery, Dr. Singh tells me I can expect to be in the hospital for about a week. When I asked him how long it would take me to heal from the surgery, his reply was, "It'll be about two weeks before you feel like a human being again." I asked him if it would be possible to make the Cape May trip I take every year with my family (all 15-17 of us) if the surgery was done in mid-July, as the Cape May vacation starts August 4. His answer was that it may be possible, because Cape May was close enough to Baltimore that I could come back if there were any complications. I asked him if I'd be able to drive, and he said he doubted it, because I'd probably still be on painkillers. He then said that it might not be the best idea to go to Cape May, it might be a little soon in my convalescence. Bummer! But healing is more important, and Cape May isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe next year.

Perhaps I'll try to get a copy of one of the pictures of my arm to post. Until then, you can practice spelling and pronouncing latissimus dorsi.