This tale really started on Wednesday, when I noticed that what I originally thought was just a boo-boo on my finger started to get really painful and red. I brushed it off as something inconsequential and went to sleep. When I woke up on Thursday, my finger looked kind of swollen and it hurt to touch. I have a pretty high pain tolerance so I ignored the discomfort and went about my day normally. However, by mid-afternoon, my finger was starting to look (and feel) worse. I showed it to Jill and she noticed that it looked like something that happened to her friend a long time ago. She continued that her friend had to get her finger cut open and the infection squeezed out. Ouch...
So to forget about school and my throbbing finger, Jillian and I took advantage of the sunny Thursday afternoon to get gelato before class.
After gelato, we went back to school to wait until my only class that day, creative writing at 6 PM.
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| Most delicious gelato and wind |
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| This is Jillian with gelato. She is very important in this story |
After creative writing, I went home for dinner. I talked to my host parents about my finger and my host mom put some sort of disinfectant in boiling hot water and had my hold my finger in the water for as long as possible. Unfortunately, I think it only made my finger more angry. Later, I went to Jill's apartment to organize our trip to Prague. Jill noticed that my finger was even worse than earlier that afternoon and decided that she needed to document it. Here is what my finger looked like around 10 PM on Thursday night.
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| Finger bandaged by my host mom |
Jill convinced me that I needed to go to the doctor to at least get it looked at. My host mom gave me the address of their family doctor and I decided to skip my morning class on Friday to get to the doctor early so that I could make it to my exam at 1 PM. If only it were that easy! Thankfully, Jillian was more than willing to skip her Friday class to accompany me.
Friday morning when I woke up, I felt my heart pounding in my finger. The swelling had gotten even worse overnight and the swelling had increased in my finger to include not only the tip of my finger but the middle joint as well. It was even redder and the stretched skin made it look like my finger was waxy. I couldn't touch anything with my finger without cringing. By 9 AM on Friday morning, my finger looked like this:
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| Before seeing the doctor on Friday morning |
We waited well over an hour, but I kind of expected that since I showed up without an appointment. Finally, the doctor called my name and Jill and I went into his office. He shook my right hand but before I could even explain to him what was going on, he asked me what was up with my left hand. He had me lie down and while he poked at my finger and examined it. It was excruciating. He told me it was really badly infected and that I needed to get it taken care of immediately because if I let it go the weekend it could become septic and either cause blood poisoning or infect the tendons and joints in my hand and cause complicated and severe problems later. It was really reassuring.
He told me he was going to try to poke/pop it open and squeeze it out but that if he couldn't get it open easily that he would have to send me to a hospital to get emergency surgery. So he took out scissors and gauze and started poking in different places on my finger. I wanted to scream and cry. I think this might have been one of the most painful things I have ever experienced in my life. Jill offered to hold my hand but I was a big girl and took it like a grown man. Sure enough, he couldn't get it open. He wrote out the address and called the hand-hospital in advance to let them know I was on my way for an emergency operation.
Maybe Jill and I should have gone there right away, but we were both hungry, so we stopped for lunch. Jill thinks that my finger got even worse between the time we were at the doctor and the time we arrived at the hospital (within an hour) but I dunno.
I checked into the hospital and we only had to wait about 5 minutes before they called me back. Jill wasn't allowed to be in the room during surgery so I braved it alone. The doctor had me sit down and hold my hand over the operating table while he touched it and looked at it. Again, worst pain in my life. After a minute of me cringing and wanting to cry, he announced, "Yep, we need to operate."
He had me lie down on the stretcher/bed thing while they called in the an anesthesiologist. When the anesthesiologist arrived, he covered my hand in iodine while he made small talk. "What are you doing in France? Where do you normally live? What do you want to do after college? etc etc" I was looking at the ceiling while he was preparing the needles to numb my finger. All of a sudden, he told me to breathe deep. What? He repeated the order. When I did, he stabbed the base of my finger with the needle and injected the novocaine. I whimpered in shock/pain and then he laughed and said, "yeaaah, I know, I'm mean." Then he left and came back a few minutes later to ask me if my finger was numb yet. It wasn't. He gave me two more shots of novocaine in the sides of my finger and left again. My finger got numb fast after that and I had fun tapping it against the table and having no idea how hard I was tapping. I don't know if I should have been doing that or not. I did look at my finger again and it was HUGE. The injection made it so fat. I laughed.
The surgeon came in and covered my hand in iodine again and put this plastic sleeve through my arm. The nurse put on a blood-pressure type thing on my upper arm and then turned it on. It cut off my circulation and HURT. I didn't feel any pain during the operation but I felt pressure and heard a lot of scraping. I tried to watch what he was doing but a pile of gauze and the surgeon's hands prevented me from seeing what was going on.
I wasn't on any drugs during the operation (besides the novocaine injection in my finger) but I think weird things happened during surgery. One of the nurses asked what "alma mater" meant and I answered "other mother" and when she didn't understand what I meant, I explained to her what it meant in America (either high school or your undergrad) and she looked at me like I was crazy. When I told this to Jill she thought I might have been in shock and might have been hallucinating...but I felt ok during the surgery! I'm not sure what happened.
Anyway, the doctor cut and scraped for about 20 minutes and then when he finished, he bandaged my finger up before I could look at it. When he let circulation return to my hand and told me to sit up, he put my arm in a sling and explained to me the post-op rules: I had to keep it elevated, I couldn't get it wet, not to touch it, get lots of rest, etc. Then I asked for drugs. He handed me a prescription that I later found out was the equivalent of Tylenol. No antibiotics, no real pain killers. The doctor told me that I needed to come back on Sunday to get my bandages changed.
When Jill and I left, we took the tram back to the city center to pick up my "prescription" and get our train tickets to Prague worked out (I had apparently booked the last ones online, but that's another story). On the tram, I started to feel really sick and the novocaine started to wear off. I felt like I was going to pass out from the pain in my hand. Jillian helped me walk to the pharmacy. The Tylenol ended up only being about a Euro, which tells you something about its strength. We got her tickets straightened out at the SNCF so we're going to Prague in 2 weeks (woohoo!)
Jill had promised me gelato if I needed to get my finger cut open and since I did, she offered to hold up her end of the deal. Despite feeling like I was going to either throw up or pass out at any minute, I accepted. She walked me to our gelato place and it made things better.
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| Happy to have pretty gelato (which matched my yellow iodine hand) |
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| Sad surgery face |
After gelato, Jill walked me back to my host family's apartment and since no one was home and I felt terrible, she hung out with me. We watched a movie and she kept great company.
That night I discovered that it is extremely difficult to get changed and ready for bed with only one arm. The "pain meds" didn't do much at all so I went to sleep with a throbbing finger. I don't know how I fell asleep that night.
Needless to say, it was a pretty low-key weekend.
Today, Sunday, my host-mom drove me back to the hospital to get my bandages changed and I could finally see what they did to my finger. It looks disgusting. As the nurse was unraveling my bandages, I noticed that my finger bled a lot post-surgery and the bandage stuck to my finger and the pain was unbearable as he peeled it off.
The doctor cut my finger at the top joint on the side and also removed about half of my fingernail. My finger is still very swollen, very red, and very painful. I have to go back again on Tuesday for another bandage change/check up but they're going to teach me how to change my own bandage then so I won't have to go back again (hopefully).
In conclusion, I no longer have my arm in a sling, I can type with a hand and two fingers, and I still want stronger pain medicine. I have problems falling asleep and it still throbs. I run fevers throughout the day.
In conclusion, Jillian is the best.
In conclusion, I hope this will not cause trouble for my trip to Ireland on Wednesday, which is supposed to be the day I make up the exam I missed on Friday.
The end...?
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