I’ll preface with an apology, I’m using AIBU because of the traffic through it, and knowing a few medical professionals frequent it. I’m sorry x
Thursday before last, my 5 year severed the top of her right hand pinky finger in the hinge side of a fire door at school. The top was removed almost entirely just above her top joint, it was attached, hanging to the side with a small piece of skin.
The surgeon operated that evening to try to reattach it and we came home with it heavily bandaged and a follow up appointment for redressing last Monday. The finger was black but they thought it might be bruising,
We went back this Monday just gone and they looked and said ‘oh that’s necrotic, it’s going to come away’. Then redressed it, we were told to make a GP appointment for next week to dress it, and received an appointment today for Dec 13th at hospital.
In the meantime we’re told it ‘might’ just come away on its own when it’s dressed next, and she’ll need more surgery to ‘tidy it up’.
I have some questions.
- Is the dead flesh, attached to her healthy flesh underneath a sepsis risk? They told us to watch for signs of infection, which I know about obviously, but I can’t see under the bandages to check for localised infection signs. She had an initial antibiotic when it happened, but not since. We’re supposed to keep the bandage dry and clean but she’s 5 and something of a dirt magnet!
- I’m concerned about the trauma if it just comes away in front of her. Obviously the initial injury was massively traumatic for her. The problem is, in addition to this she is our granddaughter. We have a special guardianship order for her. She was removed by social services before coming to us and has already experienced a number of early childhood traumas. I’m concerned about the effects more could have on her,
I knew from the nature of the injury that it was unlikely to reattach, plus it was a 6 hour wait between the injury and operation. I kind of wish I hadn’t agreed to the reattachment surgery and pushed for it to be removed, but I guess I was thinking about her own wishes for fancy nails etc in the future, silly little things that most teen girls like.
My mum is a nurse, living many miles away from me and she’s quite horrified at the ‘watch and wait’ approach, but she’s a bit older obviously and things move on so she may just have different ideas.
Apologies for the post that’s much longer than I was planning, but this has been quite therapeutic for me to type out lol.