Surgery

Today I went in to see the hand specialist, and the first thing he said after looking at the x-ray was, "this is just about as bad a fracture as you can have in your hand." As you may have deduced, this was not a good visit. I had hoped to hear that I could just keep it in a splint for a couple weeks and it would be fine, but the ruling on the field is surgery. 9:00 am tomorrow morning (Friday), I have to go in and have pins inserted.

What the doctor described to me sounds a little unusual. I have to have 2 pins inserted, one above the knuckle, and one below. They will go all the way through the finger and protrude from both sides where they will attach to some sort of external brace. This is the least invasive procedure. He said there is about a 5% chance that he will not be able to align the bones properly with this technique and will have to open up the finger and insert screws, and there is about a 1% chance that the bone chip will be to badly broken to reattach and he will have to remove it and take a piece of bone from another part of my hand an insert it. That really concerns me.

The big problem is that I chipped off a part of the bone right at the joint. The additional problem is that the two bones in the finger are no longer aligned properly. One of the bones is "sublimated", and it looks a little like a fault line. I wish I had a picture of the x-ray I could post, it's a little difficult to describe.

So, I'm a little concerned about the surgery, and unfortunately this also means I will be unable to participate in my black belt test which is now 2 weeks away. My ever caring sensei suggested I ask the doctor if he can amputate the finger and keep it frozen until after the test and then re-attach it. And while that may seem like a good idea, I'm not sure it's the way I want to go. But all the typing is starting to get to me so I think I'm going to come to a grinding halt here. This also means that there will be no Indy review today. I did see the film today, but don't have it in me to continue typing. Stay tuned.