Just trying to Help...

On March 30th, I noticed my neighbor, who is an elderly woman, had left her garage door open. Since it was late, I assumed she didn't realize it was open and decided I'd shut it for her. Well, I went around to the side door where it was very dark. Having never walked back there in the dark, and not remembering there was taller than usual step up to her walk-way, I tripped on the concrete and landed, hard. I landed with both hands, top of hands skidding the sidewalk and fingers trapped under. I knew I was hurt but thought I should at least accomplish the task I started out doing, so I rang the lady's doorbell. When she opened the door I explained to her why I was muddy, bloody and in a lot of pain! I told her I had taken a hard fall and so I would quickly shut her garage door if she would like me to. She turned on the light, so I wouldn't fall again, and we both looked down at my hands shocked to see my left hand looking anything but "normal". The funny thing is, even after seeing my hands, the blood, the mud all over me, both knees bleeding...a lovely sight to say the least, she said, "that would be great if you could just shut that garage door real fast before you go back home". I quickly did then walked into my house and started to cry; I'd held it in as long as I could!
I startled Brynn as she was dozing off, almost asleep and the other girls came running downstairs to see why I was crying (believe it or not, that isn't a regular occurrence). The girls were troopers, although Brynn had work early in the morning and Kels and Al had school, everyone offered to take me to the hospital. At this point, I started talking myself into the idea that maybe my finger would be just fine if I put a popsicle stick behind it a taped it to my finger. I remembered seeing that somewhere. I didn't want to be a wimp.... Well, Brynnlee drew the short straw and took me to the hospital. By this time, all the Insta-Cares were closed. (I didn't want to go to the hospital so badly that I even talked Brynnlee into stopping by the Schmidt's real quick to pass along the "popsicle stick" idea to Michele to see if she thought that would fix things up. By this time, I am really in pain and feeling nausea setting in and of course that's when Schmitty (Greg-Michele's husband) looked and it and proceeded to tell me just how awful it looked and assurred me I was going to need surgery! That was comforting!! (Although he did pull out his shop vac to vacumm all the mud off my clothes!).
Needless to say, after nearly 5+ hours at the hospital and lots of x-rays, the doctor's questions (which I heard from every Dr. that saw the xrays from there on out) "how in the world did you break this so bad?" I went home that night with the assurance that I would be having surgery soon and in a lovely cast from my elbow to the tips of my fingers and was told to stay in bed until a hand specialist gives me further orders. He said I hyper-extended when I broke it so when the bone snapped off, it stayed on the wrong side of the knuckle and the nerves and tendons were in a precarious spot and I needed to be careful not to move it. Plus the swelling was really bad. I wish I had pictures from the very begininng because you wouldn't believe how swollen it was in such a short amount of time. (The funniest thing was that Brynnlee wants to be a nurse and yet everytime they would lift off the dressing and ice packs from my hand, she would go white as a ghost and just about passed out on more than one occassion. As we left the hospital she said, "Mom, I'm afraid I might have to look in to a different profession"! That cracked me up!
We ended up finding a very good surgeon (hand specialist) and after looking things over, decided the swelling better go down a little so they put the surgery off to April 9, 09. A LONG 2 weeks of laying in bed with my hand strapped to me most of that time so my hand was up by my chin. No use of it what-so-ever....My girls were the best!! Bath-time, potty time, eating time...who knew how useful an extra arm can be!
The Dr. said that due to the kind of break this was, they needed to pin my fingers at a 90 degree angle. I figured no big deal! IT WAS A BIG DEAL! Fingers don't prefer being trapped at an angle that severe from their natural relaxing place. They spasmed non-stop! It was just delightful! Why did I want the neighbor ladies door shut? Was it REALLY necessary to have shut it that night?
After 4 weeks of the pins in and the cast holding my fingers at the 90 degree angle, I finally got them out and the cast off, just to get a lovely splint put on STILL at 90 degrees!
Well, now I have been in Physical Therapy working REALLY hard to get my finger to move again...it is stubborn! I still can't move the 2 knuckles and was told if it doesn't move in another couple of weeks, I would probably need another surgery! The way I see it is, do I really need to bend all the knuckles. Time will tell! It has been a wonderful learning experience and I am thankful for all challenges...right?!?
Thanks again to my girls...they are the best nurses EVER!! I love you girls! xoxo