Monday, March 05, 2007

Snap, Crackle, Pop

And I'm not talking organic rice krispies here!

Today I went in for my 2 week follow-up x-rays, and, despite my careful efforts to keep my hand protected, the bones slipped apart again. In fact, they looked worse than they did in the first x-ray.

So, what that means is that the doc got to resent (i.e. re-break) my bone again. This time, he numbed it up (which worked great) for the manipulation. The second x-ray showed that everything was perfectly lined up again and this time they splinted it at a much greater curvature than the first time. Basically it's at the same curve that you'd have if you were making the "OK" sign with your ring finger and thumb. This also means it's going to be much more in the way - nice.

By the time I was getting in the car to drive home, the nerve block was wearing off and - yowza - this thing smarts. To put it in perspective, when I first broke it, they gave me a prescription of Vicodin for the pain, and I only took one tablet on the very first night right before bed. Now, I'm on my forth tablet of the evening.

And Vicodin sucks. I'm sure it affects different people slightly differently, but for me, I'm not sure how much pain it's taking away (but I'm not about to run a personal experiment since it is helping some), and it makes me feel like I've just woken up from a NyQuil induced sleep. So now my finger hurts and I feel like I'm got some kind of unpleasant hazy hangover going on. Oh yes, sign me up for more.

So I go back in one week. If it slips again, it's time for surgery to put a pin in it. Fantastic.

3 comments:

Ms. Magoo said...

Tell the Doctor he is supposed to HEAL bones, not break them! Where did this guy go to school?

Anonymous said...

For 40 years I worked for Hand Surgeons....Now that I am retired, you need one. GOOD GRIEF.....

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear that it at least looked straight after they broke it again. That would have really sucked if the Dr. would have broken it and then been like, "Well, we tried to break it again just to see what it would do. Sorry man, it's gonna hurt like hell and I didn't even really fix it." Hopefully in a few weeks you'll have a good bill of health!