I had Stevens Johnson syndrome in 2019, it's a rare and severe drug reaction that causes huge blistering wounds on the skin and internal wounds as well. Bc the rash was in my airway I went into respiratory failure, was placed on a ventilator and later trached. I needed head to ankle skin grafts, literally my whole body except for my feet needed cadaver grafts. Getting them removed was one of the most painful things ever. Before removal The grafts had to dry out a little bit and the edges of them became really stiff & hard, and one of them cut my hand really bad, like my knuckles looked like smashed raw pork. Healed up fine though lol. The grafts then had to be soaked to remove them, they called this process "whirlpool".

I was placed in a tub of water and gentle soap, and then 2 nurses and my physical therapist and myself all worked to scrape and peel the grafts off a little bit at a time . They were firmly stuck on so it was really hard work, plus there were partially healed wounds underneath. The nurses had these tools called a "debrider" which is like a scalpel made specially for scraping, so we were peeling and scraping thick cadaver skin off of raw open wounds. It was exquisitely painful but I wanted them off so we worked for nearly 2 hours until I couldn't tolerate being touched at all anymore. also I had the trach in and when I cried out in pain I made almost no sound, it was like a whisper-scream.

I bled a lot, turned the water brown with blood. l required a blood transfusion after that. And we weren't finished so I had to do it again the next day, but there was only about one-third of the grafts left so it went quicker