The appointment began with another x-ray to check the location of the pin. A good idea since Randy has been hammering it in with various hard surfaces throughout the past 6 weeks. Looks kind of freaky, doesn't it?
Then while we were waiting, Dr. Travis did a little doctoring. Assistant Justin stood watching. It was quite the scene!
Next the real nurse came to set the area for the real doctor. You can see the assortment of pin removal devices in the sterile kits up on the table. Travis picked the one he thought the doctor would use, and he ended up being right! Poor nurse got lots of questions!
Randy got shot up with some numbing medicine to make the process less painful. From the look on his face, thee should have been some other numbing medicine before this numbing medicine! It was painful, but before he stopped writhing the doctor had already yanked that puppy out! It's a good two and a half inches long! (We got to keep it!)
Justin and Travis both went with us since it was a late appointment. Justin was upset when everything started getting set up, so we had to reassure him that nothing was for him! The doctor misunderstood Justin's concern, thinking that he didn't like what was happening to Randy. It's hard to explain to someone in a few words all of Justin's idiosyncrasies! Travis, on the other hand, might be slightly traumatized. Nah, he just thought it was cool!
One thing we have learned about this doctor is that he loves big dressings! Randy always walks away with several layers of protection, for which he he is very grateful! This one was only necessary for the night and now he is a a free man! Well, almost. He is supposed to keep from moving it for another week and then he can try out his new thumb. But no more doctor unless he wants to go for OT or unless the graft doesn't hold and his thumb starts drooping again.
So he only has a band-aid on the top of his thumb where the pin was removed and that's it! I still have to button his shirt cuffs, but he's good with everything else. He went back to his regular keyboard at work. (He was using the angled one because his thumbs kept hitting each other.) The pile of medical supplies on our bathroom counter is slowly diminishing. The one funny thing he noticed about his thumb is that the little hairs on the back of his finger (between the joints) are not in the right spot anymore because of being "readjusted". There is one dark one left that looks mighty out of place! I guess you take what you can get!
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