John's Doctor Appointment

Time for another guest poster!

I had my follow-up doctor's appointment today. I went in and he had me make a fist, and he was very surprised. I guess people usually don't regain the range of motion in their injured finger as quickly as I have.

While there I asked him about the fingernail on my left ring finger as it has fallen off and now is kind of....odd appearing. He said that he wasn't surprised that it fell off, and that only time will tell how things will come back. He said he wouldn't be surprised if it came back. I asked him whether the bump on the nail bed would pose a problem (deformed fingernail), he said we'll have to wait (by waiting he means the 6 months it'll take for the fingernail to regrow. )

What is there right now? It's not a bare nail bed (thankfully!). It's stiffer than skin but softer than a normal nail. The doctor said that although the shiny part of the fingernail grows from back near the joint, the nail bed reinforces and adds to the nail. That's the stuff I have for a fingernail right now.

I also asked him about a bump I've had on the inside of my finger, at the joint near the pinky finger. It's hard and I think it can move, but he couldn't get it to move at the appointment. He figures it's either part of the bone, the bone callus (thing that forms to repair the bone) or perhaps a tendon sheath fluid bubble (although he was most skeptical of that possibility.) If it turns out to be bone and it's annoying, I may be back to get it taken care of. Again more waiting required.

He was exceptionally pleased with my healing and said that I'm free from any restrictions in use of the finger. Furthermore, no more checkups!

After that was a physical therapy appointment. The first thing the therapist did was check my range of motion. Like before I basically made a fist and she measured the angles my joints made. At my last appointment three weeks ago, the sum of all the angles my joints made was 205 degrees. After heat was applied for about 10 minutes, that sum was increased to about 218 degrees. Today, without any heat I was able to get to 255 degrees. Normal range is 260-265 degrees. So, that was good.

The next step, is to work on strengthening. I can really tell my grip is not what it used to be. The therapist measured my right hand grip strength to be about 125 lbs. My left hand came in around 50 lbs. So, she sent me home with some exercises and some stuff that reminds me of Silly Putty. Basically, I'll use the putty in different ways to improve the strength of my hand. More good news is I don't need to come back! She said I'm doing better than 99% of the people she's seen with this type of injury.

Overall, my left ring finger is much better. When I wake up it's pretty stiff and I need to work it a bit to get it to loosen up. It also gets pretty stiff in the cold, and it doesn't take much, a cold room will stiffen it up. The doctor and therapist said this should go away over time.

The fist. I think the middle joint of my ring finger is sort of over bending to compensate for the few degrees that my end joint is missing. Maybe with the strengthening those last couple degrees will free up.

Side view. Compare this with the day after pin removal and a week after pin removal.
Click here

Shot of the top of my fingers. You can see the scar on the middle finger. The ring finger is missing the nail - but the big scar on the middle finger really takes people's attention away. At trivia night, people were thinking my middle finger was the one that was partially severed one.

Another shot of the top of my hand. The bump on the ring finger I was talking about earlier is on the pinky finger side of the joint outermost joint. This is also where the scar is on this finger. The scar runs along the joint and then forward (toward the end of the finger) and runs into where the nail should be.

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Can I tell you how proud I am of my husband? I couldn't be more happy with his results from today's appointment! No more therapy and no more doctor appointments (for the hand anyway!). All of his hard work and dedication have really paid off - which is just in time for all of our hands to be on deck (pun intended!) for our new baby to arrive!