BACK IN THE SLING:
Once More Under the Knife...
Once More Under the Knife...
I’ve gone through many months of Occupational Therapy and was nearing the end of my recovery. Or so I thought...
I was back in NY for a few weeks and went for a follow-up doctor’s appointment to check my healing progress; unfortunately, my right thumb hasn‘t been healing like it should. I could use it a little bit, but if I made a fist and rotated my hand toward the underside of my forearm, my thumb would automatically pop out. Conversely, whenever I would stretch my hand back, as if to do a push-up (which I still can’t do, btw), my thumb would automatically pull toward my palm. The last time I saw the doctors, a month or so before this visit, I explained all of this to them and they recommended more surgery to figure out what was up and to try to fix it. I blanched at the thought of more surgery, as did my occupational therapist. It had already been four months since my bike accident and I was still in therapy; I hated the idea of starting all over again... But my thumb was messed up. I could move it around, but I couldn’t do a thumbs up, I couldn’t use scissors, and, worst of all, it really hurt at the smallest thumb joint whenever I held a pen, and I had to take frequent breaks when trying to write. Still, to avoid surgery, I could live with that...
But I couldn’t live with a large screw sticking out of my arm. I’d noticed a strange, hard lump on the top side of my forearm, right in the middle. When I went for my appointment, the surgeon compared my lump to my x-rays and determined that one of the pins holding my ‘bionic’ plate in place was too long and protruded through my tendons, nerves, and such. Over time, I would develop pain, complications, and probable loss of use of parts of my hand. The pin had to go. And, while I was under, I might as well have the thumb looked at...
So I called Chris with a lovely “how would you like to come visit NY?” My surgery was scheduled for less than a week later, and Chris flew out to take care of me.
The surgeons removed two pins from my arm; they went in through the original incision, causing no extra scarring. They did slice me open in three other places, though, to work on my thumb. It turns out that one of the two main tendons in my thumb had gotten tangled in my bone chunks and metal mass and such. The surgeons released it, but it was too mangled to save. So, they clipped an ‘extra’ tendon off of my index finger and grafted it onto my thumb.
The surgery went very well, and the doctors are extremely optimistic that I should get full use of my thumb back. My forearm needs to be in a cast for six weeks, with my thumb completely immobilized, so the new tendon has time to successfully attach itself. Unlike the hell that was my surgery in May, I felt pretty great after this one (excluding the bouts of vomiting and dry-heaving as I awoke from sedation, which they say is pretty standard); I was surprised that I didn’t even need any pain medication (beyond Tylenol) the day after surgery.
Two good things about my current cast: 1) it stops before my elbow, so I can bend my arm. This has made showering and such much easier than in May, when my cast covered my broken elbow and I couldn’t straighten my arm at all. 2) Although my thumb is completely immobilized, my other four fingers are free from just above the joint. I can do most two-handed things, and I can keep these fingers moving to avoid working on them in therapy (it took me over a month to be able to bend my fingers enough to make a fist last time.
Two bad things about my cast: 1) it’s cumbersome. It’s kinda enormous, actually. It’s so bulky that I can’t really wear anything but t-shirts. 2) It’s a bloody mess. Literally. Supposedly there was a heck of a lot of bleeding during my surgery, so they put two stints into m arm to prevent swelling. It was like having two floppy, rubber straws sticking out of my arm, at the top of my cast near the elbow. When the doctor tugged the splints out of my arm the day after the surgery, blood poured out with them. I have a soft cast, wrapped (and wrapped and wrapped. Did I mention it’s huge?) in gauze, and the whole underside of it is now red-brown from dried blood. Thankfully, I have to keep my arm in a sling for now, so I can hid the mess in public (my roommate and her friend freaked when they first saw my arm thinking I was bleeding profusely).
I only have to wear this cast for two weeks, though, at which point they’ll remove it to pull out my multitude of stitches and hopefully give me a prettier, snazzier cast. Fingers crossed! On my left hand, anyway...
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