This is about 4 1/2 months from my surgery. At first my scar started to heal nice and flat. But first a story of how I thought things should have gone with the sternum scar...
About four months prior I badly cut my forehead on a sharp corner of my camper shell (cap) while buying chicken feed. It was a deep gash about two inches long and very jagged, plus it bled profusely. I was worried there would be a terrible scar, but I decided to avoid getting stitches anyway because of prior bad reaction to them including the dissolving sort. I carefully bandaged the wound and kept it moisturized over the month it took for it to heal. Despite it cracking open on several occasions, the healing progressed nicely until completely done. I emphasize "completely" as I can only trace the faintest line that I was ever injured--I even tanned there exactly like the rest of my skin. I certainly can't find the scar by touch.
I was hoping for similar for my chest incision. After two weeks the scabs fell off and my scar was nice and narrow without even a bump on the top. The chest tube scars were deep dents, though, but even they were becoming smaller every day. Then, about five weeks after surgery I started to feel itchy and the scar, especially the lower portion, started to bulge again, and a bit of suture showed through, which a nurse removed. The scar developed keloid changes and now is a bit ropey in appearance on the lower part. The Chest tube scars flattened out with some minor keloid formation, but only about 1/4 inch or smaller for each (I mentioned in an earlier post that my pacing wires left no permanent scars whatsoever). In a bizarre turn, the slowest chest tube scar to heal has the least keloid formation. It seems that it isn't so much an issue of the injury itself, but of the type of sutures the surgeons used on me. For my arthroscopic surgery on my left knee, no such sutures were used, and I can't find three of my four surgical scars, and the fourth is only visible because of lack of hairs.
I hope that the sternum scar fades away. My wife had a large keloid from a surgery (with internal stitches) a few years before we first got married (it was almost like a small walnut when I first saw it), and, while it's still present a bit, it no longer bulges above skin level and feels much smaller to me--plus it's barely visible anymore. I hope that my raised scar will regress like hers did. Already the upper half is fairly flat against my skin, and only the lower half is itchy and raised. My chest hair has grown back, but in the area of the scar the follicles seem to have been killed, especially near the keloid area, so it's hairless as well as raised. The chest tube scars' hairs are actually growing back, oddly enough, and they should be camouflaged nicely in the near future.
To avoid contractures, I frequently stretch so I'm looking straight up with my upper back slightly hyperextended. As a bonus, my posture has improved considerably since surgery. I also sometimes lie down on the bed and hang my head down off the end while on my back. This helps, too. Though the scar doesn't look that good, at least it doesn't inhibit movement like I've seen in a few other people I've known with similar scars.
I just hope that if I ever get another surgery, I can get mostly removable type stitches or be completely glued together, so I don't react like this again. Other than that, I'm quite happy to be alive and continuing down the road to recovery from my 'big surprise' in December.
Chris
