The Saga of the Thumb Part 2!

Warning!

This is once again a real warning for the pictures that are going to be in this post!

This is the second half of my thumb saga and it contains pictures of my thumb after surgery and healing!

If you don't want to continue on please leave to another site or come back tomorrow for another not disclaimer post!

Please remember this warning as you continue on with this post!

When we last left the Saga of the Thumb we had just has it drained and cleaned up by the hand surgeon and had seen him as a follow up where he said things weren't as far as he wanted them to be but it still looked a lot better!

Now on to the rest of the Saga!

The hand surgeon told me at my appointment to changed it's dressing every evening/night. This consisted of me unwrapping it, cleaning/soaking it with warm water and soap, patting it dry, letting it have a couple of minutes of air and light, (we joked that my thumb was in prison and this was it's one hour of outside recreation time! Hahaha!) then I put a nonstick gauze around the areas he drained and cleaned, then Ron would step in and help because I can't wrap my own thumb with just one hand/thumb so he would take regular white gauze and securely wrap it around my thumb a few times, and lastly he would wrap a layer a secure layer of coband to help keep it clean and dry and give it a little patting from my daily activities.

Just like I was doing before I would take a picture of it every night to see the healing process and to prove to myself that it was actually getting better!

These pictures are starting about six days after my incision and drainage that the doctor did in the ER.

So once again I warn you that the pictures below are not suitable for all viewers so viewer discretion is advised!
 

I have to give a shout out to my Squeaky! She was sitting on my lap for a lot of these pictures and never once did she try to touch or pull on my thumb! She would pull on it or touch it once or twice when it was wrapped up but that was because it was big and goofy looking so I don't blame her!

Anyway here is my thumb on day 6!

Take notice of my thumb nail in these pictures!

Here is day 7!

After 7 days my thumb was still red, swollen, just as painful, had so much pressure under the nail that I thought it was going to give birth, I couldn't bend it still, and I started running once again low grade fevers!

On day 8 I had my second follow up with the hand surgeon and I won't lie that I was nervous of what he would say when he saw it because as you can tell it didn't look like it made much progress and I was once again in enough pain from it that I was considering cutting it off again!

The MA unwrapped it and had the worse poker face when I asked her what she thought about how it looked. She said it looks pretty good which I could tell was a complete lie which didn't help my nervous feeling at all!

While I was waiting for the doctor to come in I took these pictures of my thumb.

When the doctor came in he sat down, looked at it, and gave me that "hmmm" look and vibe.

He then started to feel and push around the places he drained which didn't feel the best and he got a little drainage from one spot.

Then he pressed down on my thumb nail!

Holy I almost punched a doctor in the face Batman!! It hurt worse than any of the pain my thumb had been giving me since the beginning of this adventure!

Not only did it hurt so bad that I sucked in air to hold my breath, my eyes teared up, and it took every bit of me not to jump off the chair and through the roof but lovely, thick, mucus green nastiness oozed out of from under the top of my nail!

Now working in the medical field when I saw that my heart sank because I know exactly what that meant so what he said next wasn't completely shocking to me!

He looked at me as he cleaned up the nastiness and said I have to admit you to the hospital for IV antibiotics and do another incision and drainage to clean everything up again and take the thumb nail off.

I didn't care at all that I would be losing a thumb nail because I have nine others and it would grow back. But I was crushed to have to go back into the hospital especially since it was so close to Rondalynn's birthday and he said I would be in there at least 48 hours but hopefully no more than that.

What was also tricky about all of this was the fact that I was almost 35 weeks pregnant! Luckily the hand surgeon goes to the same hospital that my OB does and where I plan on delivering at.

He told me just to go through the ER, tell them he wanted me admitted, give them his cell phone number that he gave me so they could call him and confirm, and then we will start all the fun process.

But in order to be able to be seen in the ER at Scottsdale Shea when you are over 18 weeks pregnant you have to go up to L&D and get the all clear from the baby stand point.

I left his office not happy to be going up to be admitted since I was only planning on doing that next month when it was time to have Little Bean! I went home and got a couple of things and then headed up to the hospital.

I went straight to L&D and they hooked me up to the monitors to start monitor the baby and make sure I wasn't having contractions (which thank goodness I wasn't having any, just my normal aggravated uterus and told them what the hand surgeon had said but I knew I needed to be cleared through them first before I could go to the ER.

Now it's policy for L&D to let your OB know that their patient is up there even if it's just to be cleared to go to the ER for something not OB related. So my nurse went and called him and he said he didn't want me in the ER with all the nasty germs there, how long it takes to get everything done and set up, and with my crazy history or early labor issues with this pregnancy (that doesn't mean it's a horrible ER, in fact it's the best ER I've ever been to and would rather drive all the way up here to go to it if I needed and it wasn't a life threatening emergency) so he would admit me and consult with the hand surgeon and an infectious disease doctor. Plus if I went through the ER when it was time to admit me they would put me on the maternity floor anyway! I gave the nurse the cell phone number for the surgeon so Dr. DeSanto (that's my OB) and the hand surgeon could talk, go over a plan, and all that fun jazz.

Within 20 minutes everything was set up, a consult for the infection disease doctor was made, and I was out of triage and into my room.

The plan was to get an IV in and start me on fluids and the antibiotics, keep me comfortable, monitor the baby and for contractions once a shift, and then the next day the hand surgeon would come in and again at bedside do another incision and drainage and remove my nail. Plus he would send off swabs of the nasty to see what type of infection was going on.

Well after all my surgeries growing up my veins are more than horrible! So they had one of the anesthesia doctors come in and place an small and crazy IV in my knuckle just until I some fluids in me in hopes it would perk up my veins. But later that night before they could even start my IV antibiotics the IV went bad and had to be removed. So calls were made to my OB and infectious disease doctor on what they wanted to do because they were pretty sure they wouldn't be able to get another normal IV in and if they did it probably wouldn't last as long as it needed to. The infectious disease doctor had seen my thumb earlier that day and he knew I would have to go home for a couple of weeks home IV antibiotics so they decided to have a picc line place and until then I would take some oral antibiotics to hold me over until I could get the stronger IV one.


Since my IV decided to go bad after 6pm I would have to wait until the next day to have the line placed so I settled in for the night.

The next day they surprisingly came to get me early to go downstairs for my line and then I was started on my antibiotics when I got back upstairs!

Later that evening my nurse comes into my room with her arms full of all sorts of fun medial supplies. She said she had just talked to the hand surgeon and he would be up in about an hour to do my little bedside surgery.

A little more than an hour the hand surgeon was there, he unwrapped my thumb, and numbed the entire right side of my hand, thumb, and index finger with some Lidocaine with epi in which means like his first bedside incision and drainage my feet and hands would shake because of the epi in the Lidocaine. While he was setting everything up I took these "before pictures" of day 9 of my thumb.

He got everything sat up pretty fast and since I was all numb and ready to go he began the procedure.

Knowing how numb I got with the first procedure I didn't look away at the first cut but watched the entire thing again! And once again my little medical loving heart got all excited and it was awesome to watch! Even when the nail was off and we saw all the yuck in there. Also when he took off the nail it was amazing at how much pressure it released! It felt wonderful! By the time he was finishing up the numbing was starting to wear off so it wasn't feeling too good at all! He let it air out for a couple of minutes when he was done so it would give the nurse time to put in his order for a one time dose of something stronger for pain through my IV so it would work fast and something for nausea just in case the pain med upset my stomach. This also gave me enough time to take these "after pictures"

Again I must warn you that these next few photos are not the prettiest!

I have never seen what a finger looked like without a nail but it was fun to see it! The not so fun part was the fact that the skin under the nail is crazy sensitive even with the dressing on it so any tiny bump or rub against something made it hurt like crazy!

He ordered that he wanted the dressing changed once a day, what to dress it with, and when to follow up with him in the office but one of his PA's would still come and check in on me everyday until I went home.

I was in hospital for another three days and I don't have pictures for days 10, 11, and 12 because the PA would come in with the nurse to unwrap my thumb, check how it was doing, and then wrap it back up before I could take pictures of it. But once I got home I was able to continue with my picture taking!

Here it is on day 13!

Day 15

Day 16!

Day 17!

Day 18!

And finally Day 19!

This was also the day that I got the all clear to stop dressing it and just let it be and continuing healing!

So there you go the saga of the thumb!

It's still a little sensitive especially where my thumb nail used to be which by the way it will grow back but will take about four months per cycle and will have to go through four cycles to get back to how it will permanently come back and look.

I may update again in a couple months with how my thumb nail looks so you all can see!