finger

Andy has been playing flag football for the past few years. Luckily for him, he has not really been hurt, until this year. I was not able to attend many of his games because of my soccer commitments but one Sunday night I got out of soccer practice and thought that I would surprise him and come to the end of his game. Well I got there just as the game was ending (they won!) but I didn't get to see them play. He walked over to me and said, "I think I did something to my finger." I didn't really think much of it because he never really complains about anything and he did not really look like he was in much pain, and he just played 2 games. Apparently the injury had occurred early on in the first game and he didn't want to sit out so he kept on playing.

When we got home he asked me to take another look at it. So with my medical degree in hand, ha, I gently squeezed it and he said that it really hurt. I told him that if he really thought it was bad that he would need to call his dad and go have it x-rayed. I said this knowing that there was no way he was going to do this, because he hates going to the doctor.

So I got a phone call the next day at work. It was Andy and he said that he was on his way to his dad's office for x-rays. I was shocked and asked him if he really thought it was that bad. He did, so he got the x-rays. As it turns out I am glad he went. Not only was it broken, but it was broken in 3 places and his dad thought that he might need surgery. So off to the orthopedic doctor we went. We saw a PA that night and he said that indeed we were probably going to need surgery and set us up with an surgeon for the next day.

The surgeon agreed with everyone else assessment and said that he would need surgery. So surgery was set for the following Monday afternoon. Now, I don't know if any of you have had surgery but if you don't have a morning surgery then the whole day stinks. The same rules apply that you cannot eat or drink after midnight, but instead of having the surgery at 8 am we had to wait to go to the hospital until 1:30! It was a long time.

Here is Andy's hand the morning of the surgery. It is his left ring finger. Luckily he does not wear his wedding ring when he plays flag football so we did not have to have it cut off. You can see his finger is pretty swollen.

Here is a close up of his finger. Pretty gross.

Once we got to the hospital at 1:30 they immediately took Andy back to be prepped for surgery and I thought, this is great we will be home before you know it. Well, not so much. We ended up having to wait and he did not go into surgery until 4:15. It seemed like forever and he was hungry. The only funny part was listening to all of the other people around us that were there. We heard some funny stories!!!

While we waited I took some pictures of Andy. I know you all love the hat in the picture above. The one below is covered in iodine for surgery, but you can kind of see how his finger was a bit rotated and if we had not had it fixed, his fingers would have crossed when he made a fist.

He made it though surgery with flying colors. The doctor came out and told me that the break was even worse than he originally though and instead of the normal 3 screws that he thought he would need, he ended up need to add an additional 4th screw. So Andy now has a lot of hardware in that finger all of which will stay in there forever. Here he is the night he got home. He was a little tired and Monday night football was on.

Here is a post surgery picture. You can see all the screws that the doctor put in. Amazing that they could fit all 4 screws in one joint of his finger.

When we went back to get his stitches out I made him take more pictures. He was excited to finally be out of his cast and knew that he would be able to start moving it.

Warning: the picture below is an up close of his finger once the stitches were removed. It is kind of gross, but not too bad.

Here is the final side-by-side comparison.

Not too bad. He has been working to get all of his movement back. We are hoping that the swelling keeps going down because as you can see from the picture below he has to wear his wedding ring on his right hand. We hope that we will not have to have it resized to fit his new and improved bionic finger!

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers!!

love always,