1. As I mentioned before, I had to work really hard to find somewhere in the St Louis area to find ANYONE willing to take out the 6-7 stitches on John's fingers after surgery. Our surgeon assured us any general practitioner would be more than qualified to remove the stitches. However, no one we see regularly was willing to take out the stitches. A conservative guess would put the amount of time I spent on the phone booking this appointment right around 3 hours. Amazing when the actual stitch removal took about 4 minutes from beginning to end.
However, we were finally able to locate a place relatively close to us that was willing to take the stitches out in the time frame we needed. The bad news was that the doctor John would need to see was not a hand surgeon and wasn't going to be someone we would continue to see for follow up care.
The end result: stitches were removed last week on Monday and more X rays were taken. I'll post those pictures tomorrow at the bottom of this post for those of you who do not care to see the pins. The doctor we saw made a bunch of recommendations that were not in line with the surgeon's recommendations - and made some calls to find out what actually needed to happen.
The left hand with pins in
A hand comparison
An X Ray showing the pins in his finger. Yes, the pins go all the way through to the knuckle...This was my first visit with my OB after the accident and I had some concerns that needed to be addressed. In the end, there is lots of good news and no bad news. If something was going to happen with this pregnancy as a result of the accident, it would have happened in the first 24-48 hours after the accident occurred. All the tests they ran on me the evening of the accident didn't come up with anything at all (including not one, but two pelvic exams: FUN!, two ultrasounds, 6 hours of fetal monitoring, 6 vials of blood taken and tested, urine samples, cord blood pressure taken, amniotic fluid measurement, and old fashioned blood pressure readings).
The short version: I am not any more high risk now than I was at my appointment 4 weeks ago. Nothing has changed to make my doctor concerned about this pregancy or my health in general. Her biggest worry currently is the strain carrying/lifting William is causing my back/other parts. Unfortunatetly, it is looking like it will be two more weeks before John will be able to lift William and help me out with some of the heavy work that needs to be done. Other than that, the appointment was boring and normal without anything interesting to note.
3. John had his consultation with a hand specialist here in St Louis the morning. We were glad to be referred to someone our doctor knew personally and had worked with in the past. The appointment went well and this doctor felt John was making great progress. The doctor felt the pins needed another 2 weeks to fully allow the fractured finger to heal and so we made an appointment to return the day after William's birthday. The pin removal is supposed to be very easy (which I cannot understand). John won't be given any kind of pain medication - the pins will just be pulled out. The doctor assures us this is super simple/easy and John will be able to work for the rest of the day without problem. John is most excited because the doctor told him when the pins come out, he can keep them (ummm...yuck). We were sent on to physical therapy for a quick review of John's condition and exercises he should be working on.
PS For those of you who are interested, it is actually cheaper to delivery a baby the natural way with an epidural and stay overnight in the hospital than it is to have a finger reattached and stay 1 night in the hospital. Hospital bills for the surgery arrived yesterday. Now we wait to see what kind of fight lays ahead of us as the insurance companies start their work.
