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Painful Lessons (continued)

I left the hospital the day after my operation, with a fine case of delirium tremans as can be imagined. Morphine and I do not mix well and after a hallucinatory and uncomfortable night, I was happy to be heading for home.

My right hand was swollen, scarred, achy - wrapped in coban (a nice, tight-fitting elastic bandage designed to reduce swelling - originally developed for race horses. Gad, the things you pick up....) and splinted over at an angle that, while it relaxed the flexor tendons in my fingers, made me look like an extra in a Bangles video (you know - Walk Like an Egyptian). 38 stitches across two fingers. The original laceration was only two stitches, the rest were courtesy of the surgeons.

Zachery roamed around the house for several days with exaggerated delicacy, stepping widely around my splinted hand and on at least one occasion, evicting his mother from her favorite spot on the couch so Dad could sit and prop up his hand.

The disruption around the house was fairly significant. One of my key roles as a father to an only child is plainly to serve as chief playmate and all-around entertainment centre for Zack. This role was monumentally disrupted as I was unable to play basketball, wrestle, whack each other with sticks, draw cartoons, play video games, rough-house or generally cause havoc with pillows. In short, Zack found his entertainment options suddenly curtailed - a fact that made him quite frustrated, once the novelty of Dad's sock puppet-like splint had worn off.

My injury was equally taxing on my wife. Unable to drive with the splint, and limited in my ability to do most housework (heh), my wife had to pull double-duty - and ferry me to physiotherapy almost daily for the first two weeks.

The splint came off after six weeks (and the stiches came out - painfully) , but my mobility with my hand has been still fairly curtailed until September. Since then I have regained some flexing capability but one of the two damaged fingers shows no sign of bending, mainly due to the thick scar tissue making the repaired tendons "stick". Therapy is still ongoing, with twice-weekly trips to the hospital outpatient hand clinic, ultrasound treatments, visits with the plastic surgeon (who still keeps dropping these maddeningly off-hand, matter-of-fact observations "Hmmm, that's stuck pretty good.") and, most recently, the surreal experience of electro-shock treatment for the muscles - a process that saw my arm hooked up to an electrical stimulator that caused my hand and fingers to clench all on there own...

In short, it has been an unpleasant experience (so - practice knife safety people!) but like all experience - a highly educational one. It has left me much more aware of the essential fragility of life, and the power of the moment to utterly change your situation.

I hope that out of this I can become more appreciative of the things we take for granted, and more sympathetic to the myriad people who are in far worse positions then myself. Watching other members of the "hand club" coming and going from the therapy sessions - many of whom, whose injuries make me ashamed to bleat about my problem, makes the minor difficulties and stresses of day-to-day fade into insignificance. You sit there and think "what if" endlessly (and you do have a lot of time in waiting rooms to spend mulling over your stupidity...) and, hopefully, out of this setback, draw some life lessons - and build something to hold you and help you cope if and when Really Bad Things do happen.

So Lesson Number One - Cherish what you have in your life - love, kids, health. Don't take it for granted.

Lesson Number Two - Don't use a knife as a screwdriver. Ever.

Thanks for reading The Dad Chronicles and apologies for the long hiatus. I'm still doing an hour of evening therapy each night, so my writing time is just not there anymore. I will endeavor to post every week of two though...I still have to set down Zachery's Wild Western Adventures...

Painful Lessons

It was a Saturday, rife with chores and family - hot, humid, sunny for once, unusual in this cloudy and cool summer.

Zachery and I had dug out his portable inflatable swimming pool out of the garage and, after a vigorous 15 minutes of sustained pumping and an hour of filling it with the hose, we were finally ready for some splashing around. Zack was complaining about the leaves and dirt that was floating in the water, so I hauled out the pool's portable filter system to try to alleviate some of his complaining.

It was stupid really, one of those accidents that, in hindsight, seem so utterly predictable and preventable.

Unable to find my screwdriver set, I decided to use a butter knife from the kitchen to tighten the screws on the filter hose. I fitted one hose and was in the process of fitting the second when I realized they were reverse. Annoyed at myself and distantly distracted by Zachery's ongoing complaints about the water temperature, I whacked the knife against the wooden picnic table and my wet hand promptly slid down the handle and onto the dull serrated blade, neatly ripping across the inside of my ring and baby finger, directly across the joint.

As I said, it only took one second worth of stupidity.

If I had done it even a little lower, it probably would have missed the tendons. If I had done it only at a slightly different angle, it probably wouldn't have even broken the skin. But I didn't, and I knew within a second of looking at it that I had done something seriously wrong to my hand.

After bundling Zack into the house and rinsing the blood off of the cut, I decided that this called for more than just a bandage. Even with my lack of medical knowledge, I suspected that I had possibly severed a tendon. Zack changed out of his swim trunks and into his clothes, watching me with pale round eyes and a frightened expression.

It was a given, on a Saturday, that his mother wasn't home. Generally on Saturday, she is checking on her aging parents, buying them groceries and lottery tickets, running errands and picking up our groceries. Absent our car, I banged on the neighbor's doors only to discover, as this was the first Saturday in the last month that had decent weather, everyone except Zack and I was away.

By this time, the washcloth I had wrapped around my hand was a vivid red, and with no transportation in sight, Zachery and I ended up taking a cab to the local emergency room. We left notes at home and a message on the answering machine, and headed off.

After waiting for three hours, I finally saw the emergency doctor, who proceed to stitch up my sliced fingers (with what felt like at the time hot barbed wire, but turned out to be ordinary sutures) and gave me an appointment with the Plastic Surgeon for an assessment. By this time my wife had arrived at the hospital, a look of mixed sympathy and exasperation on her face.

We headed home, me now with two fingers now swollen to the size of German sausages and utterly unbendable and a deep, abiding worry over the condition of my hand.

The verdict several days later from the plastic surgeon - a short, intense, elfin young lady with a matter-of-fact demeanor and, I later discovered, a terrifically skilled reputation for her work on hands and ear reconstruction - was that I had inflicted a very serious hand injury, severing two tendons. Surgery was required and I was immediately admitted and put on the wait list for a surgical table.

I haven't had a surgical procedure since I was twelve and, in all honesty, have a certain dread of hospitals and doctors. Zachery and my wife dropped by in the evening and according my wife, Zachery had been extremely worried about me all day, periodically crying. Visiting with me though, he seeme fine. Intensely interested in the movable bed, he pushed the buttons and shifted it in all the directions he could, later demanding that I get out and let him "ride it".

That's about all I have room for in this tale tonight. Thanks for the get-well wishes and thanks for reading the Dad Chronicles.

Part II shortly.

Hiatus

Well, it's official. I managed to sever the flexor tendons on my right hand in the baby finger and the ring finger. The surgery happened the day before yesterday and now I am officially left-handed for the next six weeks or possibly longer.

The Dad Chronicles and Booklinker will be in hiatus until recovery. So get the hell off your computer and go enjoy the summer.

See you in six weeks!

Whoops

The Dad Chronicles will be taking a haitus for the next little while as I unfortunately managed to accidently slice my right hand while setting up Zack's big inflatable pool yesterday. It may or may not have caused some tendon damage (I'll find out later this week) but it is enough to put the kibosh on the post I was planning to put up for the next week or two, until I find out if it will need surgery.

Right now, typing hurts.

Bye!

I'm Being Eaten By a Boa Constrictor...

Driving to the video store on the weekend, Zack started singing to himself in the backseat.

I laughed so hard I almost had to pull over...

I'm being eaten by a Boa Constrictor,
a Boa Constrictor,
a Boa Constrictor,

I'm being eaten by a Boa Constrictor,
AND I DON'T LIKE IT ONE BIT!

Oh No! He's got my toe
Oh gee! He's got my knees

I'm being eaten by a Boa Constrictor,
a Boa Constrictor,
a Boa Constrictor,

I'm being eaten by a Boa Constrictor,
AND I DON'T LIKE IT ONE BIT!

Oh my! He's got my thighs
Oh, Fiddle! He's got my middle,

I'm being eaten by a Boa Constrictor,
a Boa Constrictor,
a Boa Constrictor,

I'm being eaten by a Boa Constrictor,
AND I DON'T LIKE IT ONE BIT!

Oh heck! He's got my neck!
Oh dread! He's got my head!

(muffled) mmm...mmmmm..mmmm...mmmm,
m mmm mmmmmmmmmmm,
m mmm mmmmmmmmmmm,

mm mmmmmmm mm m mmm mmmmmmmmmmmm,
MMM M MMMMM MMMM MM MMM MMM!

Comments are always welcome. You can reach me at dadchronicles(at)hotmail.com.