Hi all --
Thanks for your responses.

To DarkEyeLady -- Packing the wound is really not hard and it is more of a hole than a wound -- a low spot where any drainage can seep thru. I will ask the surgeon next week if this hole will have to stay open until he has the next free flap surgery or if we can allow it to heal now that radiation is done. The source of the infections/abscesses has not really been determined yet. If could be that the fistula never did heal over and that is why it keeps coming back. Although the surgeon seems to think it is the bone degeneration causing it.

TO Karen Rose:
I had read your posts about the metal coming thru and that helped me to not freak out when I saw the bone. It is also helpful to know that Chris does not really feel it, since the bone is already dead and so many nerves to that area have been cut.

It is because of your posts that helped me that I decided to put this one in. In print it seems worse than it is, and I know it will help others to read things like this and know that people do get thru this mess. Right now Chris is tinkering in the basement, getting together camping supplies so he can go to the woods with his brothers next weekend. He is still very tired and very weak, and has to take pain meds and sleeping pills, but that isn't stopping him.