Can ya give me a hand??

Back on the 4th of July, before our big BBQ , I was preparing some meat in the morning.  I had two slabs of pork ribs that were frozen together.  I had put them in the microwave to thaw, but it was taking to darn long and I got impatient with all the other things I had to do.  So I did something not smart.

I tried to jam a sharp knife between the layers of meat.  I held on to that blade and put my full weight into splitting those slabs apart.  And my hand slipped over the edge of the blade.  It bled like the dickens for 5 minutes, but then it stopped.  I had weird lightning bolts of pain, but nothing too bad.  I kept it bandaged for a couple days.  And yes, the ribs were delicious.


The 4th was on a Monday.  On Wednesday, I noticed when I took off the band-aids that I couldn't bend my pinky finger.  It was a very strange sensation.  After a trip to urgent care and a visit to a hand surgeon, it was determined that I would need surgery to repair a severed tendon.  Akkk!

This is me before surgery, blissfully unaware.  The anesthesiologist made me sing for my drugs.  They have these cool new paper gowns that they pump warm air into, so you don't get cold.  Loved that.

And this is me, after surgery.  Nauseous, tired, loopy.  They used a laryngeal mask airway on me, so that no trach tube would damage my vocal chords. :-)

I had surgery on Wednesday, July 13.  I was wrapped up and immobile, so I called for reinforcements!

Grandma was able to come out and help for 5 days.  It was so nice to have her here, though she didn't get much rest with Sunrise running around escaping all the time.

On Friday, just 2 days later, I had my first physical therapy appointment.  The PT removed the large dressing and looked at the stitches, and I began passive range of motion exercises.  It was the first time I saw the surgery site and stitches.  The doc had to go searching up and down to find each end of the tendon.  I began to use my left hand to move and bend the affected hand.

He also made me a splint.

Yeah, I went with camo colors.

For the first 3 weeks, it was all passive movement of the finger to not let it lock up.  I get to do finger exercises everywhere.

This was taken a week and a half after surgery.

This is after two and a half week after surgery.  I'll update with another post later... still working the finger hard to stop it from locking at the last knuckle.