We talked a lot this week about what would happen at the next doctor visit. If Naomi was prepared, she might not scream so much, right?? She was pretty nervous, but Matt took off the top layer of wrap (the purple one) and put a new one on. Naomi was thrilled to have a clean one, PLUS it helped her see that not everything we're going to do to her thumb will hurt.
Naomi knew they would be taking the white gauze off as well as the splint (which she refers to as the spoon). It still scared her quite a bit. This picture shows the gauze before they removed it.
Here we are, mid-gauze-removal. Unfortunately, the gauze had basically been integrated into the wound, so they had to do some tugging and scraping to get it off. It hurt Naomi just as much as it sounds like it would hurt.
They also poured water over the gauze-and-thumb-connection to help get the gauze off.
Front view: the doctor said the nail bed is intact and looks terrific. Obviously there is no nail now, but it's all set up for the nail to grow back in.
Top view: sorry for the blurriness. I didn't want to hold up the rewrapping of the thumb too much. The dark line on top is where the stitches started. It looked like a big puckered ridge, although I couldn't see the back since I was busy trying to calm Naomi down a bit.
The ends of the stitches were poking up, and Naomi laughed afterwards when I told her I thought they looked like hairs. So now she thinks she has a hairy thumb.
The worst part was when they had to get the gauze off her thumb - that couldn't be done gently, and it started up some fresh bleeding. That was the only part of the visit where Naomi screamed and thrashed, though, and she did really well! She was very excited (translation: the sobbing subsided) to discover the doctor wants to leave the stitches in for one more week. We may take more x-rays at that visit.
As for now, the doctor said that everything looks great. The nail bed is intact, the stitches look good, there was no abnormal swelling or bleeding, no infection and we don't need to do another round of antibiotics. The shape looked terrific to me (remember, the curved part of the bone was shattered, so they weren't sure her thumb would have the normal curvature). And this time they put a non-sticky pad on the thumb before putting on the rest of the wrap, so hopefully we won't have to dig in Naomi's wound next time to get the bandage off!
Matt gave Naomi a priesthood blessing this morning, and Naomi remembered the words from it. After the gauze had been scraped off her thumb, they gave us a few minutes for her to quiet down. I reminded her of the blessing and she calmed down right away. She told me how it was going to be okay and the doctor would be able to help her because that's what Heavenly Father had told her in the blessing. I'm glad she understood enough to be comforted by that!
3 comments:
That last paragraph is so sweet! She is so sensitive to the spirit, how neat!
Glad everything went well and that her thumb is looking so good!
I was just going to say just what Angie said! What a great thing for her to be able to look back on that blessing as she gets older.
I thought I had already subscribed to your blog so I totally missed all of this. I need to fix that!.
Poor girl (and poor mom!). That just sounds awful. I hope she's all better soon.
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