Dog Bite

Solana was just your average two year old in April 2010. Solana, her older sister Amara, and I all flew to my grandparent’s house in Modesto, CA on April 1, 2010. The following morning, Solana was bit on her front right scalp by one of my grandparents many black Labradors. We have a dog at home, whom Solana is very comfortable with, but these dogs have not been around small children ever. I don’t believe the dog was in any way evil, I simply think the dog may have been startled by Solana and reacted by biting her. Because of her age and where he bit here, he caused significant damage to her scalp, but thank the Lord it is all cosmetic and she did not suffer from any brain damage.  We rushed her to the local ER and she was later care flighted to Shriner’s Children Hospital in Sacramento, CA, where we spent two weeks.

                         Waiting at the airport to board our plane to Sacramento.

They attempted to return the torn skin to her scalp, but it was too badly damaged by the dog/incident. (The skin was kept on ice during her ER visit and flight). A few days later, they grafted some skin from the back of her head, although this skin had no hair follicles, so she was bald in this area. We were advised tissue expanders would be the best option to restore hair to that area.

                                             Original skin returned to scalp.

New grafted skin.

In June 2011, we flew back to Sacramento, where they implanted three self expanding tissue expanders into her scalp. These types of expanders have been used in Europe for years, but were just recently approved for use in the US. The day after they implanted and her head was unbandaged we saw that the expanders were tearing and bruising her skin. The day after the original surgery, Solana went back into surgery to remove one of the expanders. The following day she went into surgery again to remove the other two.  It was immediately evident things were not going to progress well using these expanders. Solana underwent three surgeries in three days and the process was completely unsuccessful. We were advised to wait a minimum of six months, to give her a rest from the hospital, and then we could try using “regular” tissue expanders.

                                 The self expanding expanders (tearing her skin).

Later that year Amara started Kindergarten so traveling to California would not be as easy. We ultimately decided to have the next procedure done locally at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, TX. This brings us to the current procedure.