Look away, squeamish


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Feeling festive pre-Christmas, I decided some olive branches and some pohutukawa logs could become a Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer head Christmas decoration.

All was going well until a well-honed 1″ chisel met my knuckles.

Needless to say, that was a memorable weekend. I do not like seeing my own bones exposed. I do not like hospitals. I do not like waiting. But there is nothing like trauma to awake the senses. Right?

The Head

I finished Rudolph’s head in time for 25 December (albeit one-handed). Is it a Christmas decoration? Or does it say, “I went to the North Pole, hunted down that scwewy deer and mounted its damned head on the wall”?

A moderate success I think? Worth a tendon? Probably not.

The Wound

In A&E, what started with a bad cut on the back of my hand escalated. The escalation was closely related to the number of medical professionals who poked around inside my hand like they were poking around in an envelope for birthday money.

I am purposely leaving the money shot photo until the end of this post so you have to scroll down with intent).

The confusion seemed to be differing thoughts on how many extensor tendons there ought to have been in my index finger. And without knowing that, it is understandable that it would be a little difficult to decide what is there, what is missing and what needs fixing.

The final verdict, ultimately the purview of the surgeon who got to tear open the envelope and do his thing (I was under local anaesthetic so I saw it too but I was a passive observer) was that I had cut right through one of the tendons to be my index finger on the back of my right hand. He fished out the cut ends and sutured them together and I was good to go in under an hour.

I am now at the 4-week stage, which means I no longer need to wear a harness on my hand 24-7…but still no heavy loads.

What’s been bugging me

I am still not 100% what I did to myself and what the pros did to fix it. It’s the ‘how many tendons’ issue I mentioned before. I have been doing a little research, and have a follow-up appointment with the surgeon next week. I’ll compose my findings in a post when they are…er…composed.

Money shot time

It could have been a lot worse. I suspect a clean-cut, to a surgeon, is a good cut. Almost done their work for them 😀

As I arrived in A&E. Pretty nasty, but still 4 fingers and a thumb.
Zoe (my wife) said this reminded her of pork belly.