followup #3

I had another followup visit with Dr. Del Pizzo today. He's happy with how the wound is healing. I will need to continue to pack the wound on a daily basis, though, and probably will for quite a bit longer. Apparently, I will need to continue to pack and cover the wound until my belly button gets back to a normal belly button depth. I guess I had been assuming that I was just going to have this fairly deep belly button for the rest of my life, but I learned that eventually it will work its way back to a normal size. At the moment, it seems like it's still quite a ways from normal size, even though it has progressed quite a bit over the last two weeks.

I continue to have my up days and my down days in terms of energy level - although as time goes on the ups are higher and the downs aren't as low. I was able to get through a 90 minute baseball practice yesterday with the baseball team, but was pretty wiped out in the evening. Dr. Del Pizzo said that I am free to do pretty much anything that my body feels up for at this point - the only things to avoid are activities that stress the abdominal area.

I will still need to see Dr. Del Pizzo at least one more time. I'm to email and/or call him with my progress in the next week or two. Depending on what he hears from me, he'll either have me down again right away or wait a little while longer to see how things continue to progress. If all goes well, it will be just one more visit to check things out after it is all healed.