Wednesday, August 01, 2012

A Mower Mishap

Back when our house was broke into and I had lost the diamond from my wedding ring (which I was blessed enough to find!), I prepared myself for one of those "seasons" of trials.  You know that saying, "When it rains, it pours"? Well, after those first couple weeks in July of the break-in & lost diamond, I thought, I need to buckle down and prepare myself for whatever might be coming in the future and not let it stress me out.  After all, it's just a season, God is still in control and this will eventually pass. 

This last week we went through yet another trial - well, Jason did anyway.  It was the day his sister was flying into town and he was working with Doug as usual out on a property.  I had stayed home because my stomach was upset from the hormones I'd been taking and thought I would just go in late to work.  Around 11am, I woke up to Jason standing in the bedroom and saying, "Don't panic." Ok, I won't panic - I thought to myself.  Jason says it again, and this time adds, "I've been seriously hurt and I need to go to the emergency room." Lovely. Because he's calm, I'm actually not too worried.  I felt ok enough to take him myself, since I was worried that the loss of blood might make him too lightheaded to drive himself.  We headed out to the hospital and waited to be seen.

All that red = blood.  He had his hand raised above his head in order to lessen the pain and the bleeding.

 
What happened was that the spring on the bar of the push mower was broken, so out of habit, when he left go of the bar and heard the blades wind down, he automatically reached under the mower to adjust the height.  Yeah, you know where this is going.  Ouch.  The blades nearly severed the entire tip of his left ring finger and completely crushed the bone. Thankfully, the ortho surgeon was able to save the fingertip, but when Jason had asked him what he would do in this situation, the Dr. LITERALLY said he would "lop it off and move on." Um, excuse me? WHOA Ghetto Doctor! Jason did everything in his power to communicate, that he's very attached to his fingertip (no pun intended) and would like to keep it.

 7 numbing shots & 11 stitches later - his finger was saved.

Later that evening, with his entire hand numbed and bandaged, we headed out to see his sister Kelley over at his parents house.  As we were walking out the door, Jason goes to lock up the house and looks at me and says, "Why won't the door close?" I look at him incredulously, "Because your FINGER IS IN THE DOOR!" Yup, that just happened. He had been so numbed, he didn't even feel it.

The next morning, when he closed the door on his finger yet again, before heading to the ortho surgeon, he felt it.  It wasn't until the surgeon removed his bandages 2 days later, that I had the guts to check out his poor finger.  The pic below is how it looked.  Looks kinda like a zombie huh?
  
For those of you who don't want the details (as if you're not grossed out enough already) - the surgeon had to remove what was left of the nail and stitch the layers of his skin back together.  There's actually about 8-9 stitches under his nail.  Then he put the nail back on the finger in order to save the nail bed. 3-4 more stitches are on the outside. I know, so disgusting.


If you're still reading, this last picture is what his finger looked like last night, 1 week after the accident. Not much better really.  Believe it or not, we've been told by the surgeon that finger bones can actually regenerate much like a lizard's tale so maybe he'll once again have a fingertip after all! But for now, it's just all kinds of sick-nast and I'm really not to keen on him touching me with it - ESPECIALLY BEFORE DINNER! (You hear that honey!) blech!!!!  We've been told to expect 6 months for healing, and 9 months before it starts to feel normal. 

Aren't y'all glad I blogged!  Yeah!!! :-)

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