Boys...
I knew, from my very early days as a parent, that raising a son
was going to be nothing short of exciting. From the bugs and worms and
creepy crawly things that my cute little three year old would be so proud to
show me, to the pediatric visit to treat a scratch on his eyeball, I have not
been disappointed; excitement is exactly what I got. This week is no exception.
Yesterday (Monday), while Katherine and I were wrapping up
homework, I received a call from the school. "We have an
injury." said the school administrator, who gets to make those delicate
calls home to parents. "Okay", I said in my
if-it-were-serious-they-would-have-called-911-first voice. "Here,
I'll let you talk to Coach." Patrick's soccer coach comes on,
"His finger...weird...". The cell phone call was breaking up,
but "finger" and "weird" in the same sentence can't be
good. Perhaps they already did call 911 and I'm their second call.
I'm able to piece together that there is a finger injury and they
think I should have the doctor look at it. Coach thinks it's probably
jammed/sprained.
Okay. No blood, protruding bones, missing parts, or loss of
consciousness. I calmly proceed to round up Katherine and something to
do, since unplanned doctor's office visits are *never* quick.
When I arrive at the school, Patrick is standing by the coach's
car in his goal-keeper clothes, holding an ice pack to his hand. He is
calm, but clearly hurting. The finger "looks" pretty normal;
very little swelling, no discoloration, and he can move it...a little.
While we gather up Patrick's school stuff and soccer stuff, and get the
car loaded, I call the pediatrician to talk to the duty nurse. She
recommends we go to "walk-up". It's a smaller Level 2 trauma
facility; a step up from the pediatrician's office (where they don't have any
imaging equipment), but not a Level 1 trauma center with all the bells and
whistles that go with it. Anyway, it's close to home and is small enough
to not require a parking garage, so that's where we go.
It didn't take long for Patrick to be seen and x-rayed. I
asked if I could get a copy of the film. In this day and age, a
"copy of" something usually means a digital file, but when the
imaging technician returned to our room, she handed me a piece of paper with a
printout of the x-ray and announced that the finger was broken. The ER doctor explained that Patrick had a
comminuted fracture of the fifth proximal phalanx (on his left hand), which is
med-school speak for “he shattered the big bone in his pinky”.
The X-Ray
The X-Ray and his finger
The doctor called an orthopedic specialist for a consult, but
after more than an hour of not hearing from the specialist, they wrote up our
discharge papers and told us to go to “the” ER…the big one, at the
university…with a parking garage. By now
it’s after 7:00 in the evening (I picked Patrick up before 5:00 and we went
straight to the clinic) and we were all hungry.
We stopped at McDonald’s for a fast-food dinner on our way to the
emergency room at the hospital.
I won’t go into all the gory details about how I had trouble
finding the Emergency entrance and the parking garage, but we did finally make
it into the hospital. I wasn’t sure I
would ever find my car again, but at least we were together and Patrick was
being checked in with the attending physician on duty.
After a lot of waiting, we were escorted to a little “room” where
we eventually met the orthopedic specialist and his med school student. They talked to Patrick, mostly about how cool
his goalkeeper jersey was, and inspected his finger. The orthopedist explained that since
Patrick’s finger was “crooked” (instead of curling down to his palm when he
tried to make a fist, it curled out and away from the other fingers), they
would need to “manipulate” the finger before splinting it. Patrick was given a “shot, or no shot” option
(nerve blocker so that he wouldn’t feel so much pain when they pulled and
squeezed on his finger) and opted for the nerve blocker.
Nerve blocker - check.
Once the nerve blocker was in, the swelling of his finger was more
pronounced. He pointed out that his
finger swelled up with nerve blocker the same way the mice (at the raptor
rescue where he volunteers) swell up when he injects them with water (this is
how raptors get their hydration).
Normal pinky...NOT normal pinky.
Once his finger was free of feeling, the orthopedist and his
student returned to “manipulate” the finger.
Pull a little...
Squeeze a little...
Squeeze a little more...
Applying the splint was a two-man operation. A plaster “channel cast” was applied to
protect the pinky, and used the fourth finger as a stabilizer. The cast, which is “U” shaped and doesn’t go
all the way around his arm, his held on by an elastic bandage.
While the med student held the cast to make sure that the plaster cured
with the fingers at the correct angle, the orthopedist talked to Patrick about
structure of the hand and what would come next in his treatment.
Once the cast was set, Patrick was rolled away for one last set of
x-rays to make sure that everything was in the right place. While he was gone, the duty nurse came to
deliver discharge papers so that when Patrick returned we could finally go
home. By the time we finally left the
hospital, it was around 10:30…way past our bedtime. I should say that at some point (around 9:00),
Jörg came to collect Katherine to take her home so that she could go to bed.
By 11:00, we were home and ready to crash. It sure is a lot of drama over one little
pinky. J
Oh, I never told you how it happened. Patrick was practicing some goalkeeping
skills when a former teammate (who graduated last year and has been coming back
to help train the young soccer team) kicked the ball into the goal. Patrick dove for the ball, but his pinky got
there first and the ball impacted the tip of the finger, driving the finger
back into the hand…imagine a straight line from the tip of the finger back
toward the elbow.
I’ll leave you with that thought.
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