What a 15% rotation looks like....Or what happens when you try to fly

On December 8th, I received a call from Emily's school.  The woman on the other end explained that Emily was out at recess and fell.  She hurt her pinky finger and that I should probably come and get her.  I gave my Dad a call and he picked her up.  His job was to look at her hand and tell me if I needed to get off work right away and take her to see a doctor or if it could wait until I got off work ( a couple of hours later) and take her in after dinner. 

He said I should take her right away.

So I left work and took her to the doctors office.

You can see from this view that there is definitely something wrong with her right pinky right?

Here you can see the rotation of her finger and her cool scrapes on the side of her hand.

 So basically the doctor said that they would like us to see a hand surgeon and they would wrapped it and she wore a sling for the weekend.

Oh and I probably should say at this point they believed there was some damage to her growth plate in her little finger.  They also said if that was the case, to expect surgery, so we did.

Monday morning we saw the specialist. He had confirmed the growth plate damage.  He said that he could do the repair in the office, but that kids had a tendency to scream loudly and scare the other patients. (he is a funny guy!)  So he had us schedule surgery for the next day (12/13). 

Em and I went to the hospital to get checked in and changed.  Dad came later after he dropped Sophia and Nathan off at daycare.  Emily got a new pink blanket and some little hospital socks.  The staff was great and super accomodating for her.  A child's advocate came in and talked with her.  She brought in an oxygen/anesthesia mask to show her what it would look like and a puzzle she could keep.

She went into surgery and was done in about 45 minutes.  Her recovery took awhile.  She ended up getting sick and the medicine they gave her to stop her nausea made her sleepy so we didn't get home until almost 1 (we were there @8am).  She could keep anything down, not water or sprite and definitely no food. 
Finally she ate some saltines and was starting to feel better, but that was about 7pm that night.





Here is an x-ray taken after the surgery and before the wires were trimmed down.

She had a post-op with the specialist about a week and a half after surgery.  They took some more x-rays and we had to get a splint made for her.

Here is the her hand after the surgery.  It had been wrapped up since then, so we couldn't really wash it - that's why you can still see the "this is the right finger for surgery" dot on the top of her finger.

Here is a close-up of the wires.  You think they're gross now, you should have seen them when they were pulled out - but don't worry - there aren't any pics of that.

This splint was made in the physical therapy dept of Riverton IHC while we waited.  That purple stuff is sorta like plastic canvas that is put in warm water to soften and shape.  Then the lady attached the velcro straps.  It was really cool to watch her make it!

So she sported that cool purple accessory for 3 weeks.  She had the wires removed on 1/11 and she's doing great.  She even got to keep the wires.  I told her she could keep her wires with my pins! She didn't think that was such a cool idea - besides, I think she wants to put them on her shelf in her room as a badge of honor or courage or just plain grossness.  Yeah that's probably it...now she has a badge of grossness!

So this is it.  Emily's right hand 2.0.  This was taken the same day the wires came out and after a shower!! (please don't think that she went a month without bathing, she didn't. But it was the first time she could get her whole hand wet)

Ok, are you wondering how this whole thing started in the first place?  I guess a boy was teasing her friend during recess.  This friend took off to clobber he and Emily went chasing after.  I can't help but wonder, if she did this to herself, what would that kid looked like if she was able to catch him?