Surgery 1

Start from the beginning

Don't eat after midnight, report to admissions 9 am, then anasthesiology, the surgery waiting room, then surgery prep....

So many people, so many Dr's, so many can'ts, don'ts and I-don't-know's. I was lost in it all, so was Tim. He was afraid of hospitals, and just as scared as I was, but you wouldn't have known it. We went through a whole lot of hurry up and wait, met some neat people - Donna was my favorite, and everything seemed fine when we left. The next two days the bandage really hurt I had three conversations over whether or not the bandage might be too tight, or I was imagining things. I loosened it a bit at the bottom after the last one and went in the following week for follow-up.

It was pretty obvious the Dr. was looking at something he had not expected yet trying to look as non-committal as possible. I had few expectations but I had not expected what I was looking at. The index finger was black and shriveled over most of the right side, and the top of the middle finger was all white and mangled. I hadn't even cut that part. Both of them had what looked like yellow thumb tacks coming out of the ends. It was the middle finger that was perplexing the Dr. He told us that the first knuckle of the index finger and all of the white skin on the middle finger was dead. We would have to amputate and do a skin graft the following week. Swelling should be over and he wanted us to change the bandage daily now.

Wow was he wrong!

That middle finger swelled up the size of a German sausage and I am not kidding. So, I called and talked to his nurse about the enormity of it 2 days latter and she said to come down and she would help us change the bandage and look at it. I e-mailed Tim and we went up around 4:30 Friday afternoon. Immediately she went and got the Dr.

It had developed fluid and would have to be cleaned out now. The Dr and two nurses stayed late to do what they called a "debridement" and surgery plans changed. Now we would be amputating and another debridement sooner rather than later. Grafting would be unlikely, still change the bandage daily.

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