Update

 Well, the second operation went off okay ... there is a faint pulse in the muscle still, so possibly he won't lose the whole thing. It was a very bad night. He had to have a ventilator down his windpipe and thought he had had a stroke and had lost the power of speech. He was very agitated and tearful. I was allowed in for one minute at eleven am on Friday and the first words he said to me were: "I thought I'd had a stroke because I lost the power of speech." Well, that immediately told me that he had not become brain-damaged and that mentally he was fine! I was worried he would have lost oxygen because he had a lung infection as well. But Dr Hellig gave him an antibiotic. What I still didn't know was whether he could walk or not. But today, that is five days later, most of his drips and tubes have been removed. However, the plastic surgeon Dr Landau is still not satisfied and wants him to stay in ICU for at least another night. So that's seven days so far.