My Lucky Fin: Finger Surgery

Ok so surgery details and updates!

My little lucky fin had his first hand surgery on Thursday (10/23/14) on his left hand.

This is what it looked like going into surgery. This way you can visualize it as I try to explain all that they worked on.

As you can see the pointer finger and the pinkie finger both still had bands around the tops. People often question what I mean when I say he still had bands, so here it is. The bands are still technically active due to the fact that as he grows, the bands to not and would eventually amputate the tips of his fingers. At least this is my understanding. So because of this, the bands needed to be cut and released so this would not happen. The doctor went in and did what is called a "Z-stitch" which means exactly what it sounds like, they stitch up his finger in the pattern of a Z.

Next. The middle finger and ring finger were fused together as you can see above. The doctor split the two and did a Z-stitch on the middle finger as well and tried to make it "less bulbly" as the doc put it as well as removing the little bundle of skin.

We went in bright and early at 6 am that morning and waiting until 8:50 for him to be taken back for surgery. He was starving and exhausted to say the least but he made it through. The nurse was awesome and came out a few times to give us updates on how he was doing. Each time was a positive report!

We waited what seemed to be forever and around 10:40 the doctor came out and told us the good news, that he was done and was able to accomplish everything he had wanted! We could see our little man in just a little bit but had to wait for them to cast his hand.

When we got back there he was not happy :( It's so hard seeing your baby. Your one year old baby hooked up to all sorts of machines, screaming because he's hungry but his throat had a breathing tube down it during surgery so it's all scratchy and dry. It's rough to see. And then when you get to hold him, to finally hold that precious child and he calms down while he eats but still isn't happy... That sucks. They ended up having to give him some more Valium because he wouldn't calm down. Needless to say he slept after that while we tried to get his stats stabilized. That took about 2 hours before we could leave the recovery room and go back down to our room that we were in that morning. Little man seemed to just sleep all day but when he was awake he was happy! It was precious :) Our good friend Joe decided to stop by with some coffee which was great! We spent the rest of the afternoon debating whether or not to stay over night to monitor his stats or not (it was his breathing.) After a lot of deliberation we decided it was safe to go home! We ended up leaving around 4:45 to finally go home! Jude did relatively well his first night with a cast, woke up a few times but went back to sleep. And ever since surgery he has been so cuddly and just wants to be held! So cute and this mommy loves it!

Since being home we have had some big adjustments. Things people don't warn you about and you don't think about. You think of all the normal things such as pain levels, not being able to use that hand, hitting things with his cast, etc. But what you don't think about is how will he crawl on the tile? Will he hold a bottle? How about holding his food pouches without them falling? Also, the pain meds mess with my baby! I hate giving it to him but how can I not when he just had surgery and is in pain. I'm just gonna say it: having a baby in a cast, sucks. So there it is, although I am SO grateful that he pulled through and he is a strong little boy and will do just fine, as a mom I hate seeing it. I hate knowing that he is only cuddling because he is in pain and doesn't feel well. Things that I can't necessarily control.

Anyway, I'm done and now onto some pictures from the big day!