Not for the squeemish

I got the stitches out of my hand this past Friday. It was 98% painless, and I got a good report from the doc. The assistant took the stitches out and put steri-strips on...which lasted until I got home. He said ok to get the site wet, but don't soak. Ok, it got wet, not soaked, but it still got water logged and split open. It looks really disgusting.

All in all, this experience from beginning to end was not a pleasant one, but not horrible. Dr. T gave me a hug (and a genuine, caring hug) as I was leaving his office, and just knowing the doc has a heart and is caring, well, that made it all ok. He is a good doc. I would recommend him to anyone. Anytime he knew he hurt me (i.e. as when he injected cortisone a year ago and lidocaine for the surgery) he apologized...said he was sorry he hurt me. Honestly, some docs don't seem to care.


Picture 1. Taken the day after stitches were removed. Oops...got the incision wet and the skin got saturated and the incision seperated. The steristrips the doc applied came off and so I put it together with bandaids.











So here is the ugliness of my hand...the day after stitches removed, and then two days after. It is improving slightly. ( :




Picture 2. Two days after stitches came out...the skin on either side of the incision is soft and gooey. I have to keep a band aid on it at all times. I highly recommend Nexcare bandaids. They make a near-water-tight seal all around the affected area and are very flexible. Mostly this isn't painful except when I bump my hand right on the incision area. Ouch!

The Deed Has Been Done

(The bandaged up mess!)

The ole' trigger thumb has been repaired. The surgery took only about 15 minutes from the antiseptic wash down to the final wrapping. (The wait for surgery was much longer...three hours). The worst part of the whole thing was the initial injection to numb the area. The needle went in someplace between my thumb and pointer finger. I screamed loud enough to shatter the window in the operating room door. My wonderful nurse, Nicki, held my hand and I squeezed her hand as hard as I squeezed the Hubster's when I was in labor with Courage. The next injection was not near as bad because the lidocaine from the first shot was beginning to kick in.

Oh, the 5mg Valium tablet I took before surgery... did absolutely nothing to calm my nerves or make sleepy or make me 'not care' as the doc promised. I tried to tell him that such things as Novocaine, laughing gas, and small doses of anesthesia do not work on me. I told him I have awakened during surgical procedures twice. He didn't listen and would not give me more Valium. However, after seeing I was not affected by the Valium, he did shoot wonderfully large amounts of numbing agent into my hand so that I would not feel the scalpel as it sliced into the crease where thumb meets fleshy palm pad. I only felt tingling, pulling and pushing after that.

So far I have only resorted to Tylenol one time. I didn't get the pain pill prescription filled...because as I am very fearful of needles, actual pain does not bother me that much. He said I wouldn't feel like working the day after, but I decided the worst of it was over and went to work today anyways. You really don't appreciate your thumb that much until you have limited use of it. But after much exercise today, the thumb is already loosening up and feeling more mobile and useful. I am really looking forward to this cumbersome bandage coming off soon.

(that's the pill bottle my Valium came in...not pain pills!)