A "Thumb"-what disturbing tale

Warning: This post contains graphic photos of a wound.  Viewers who have passed out during the delivery of their children or on hospital tours may want to look away.

The Sunday after Annmarie's huge Austen Land surprise party (see pics in another post soon), we were having dinner with our friends the Field's and I offered to cut some cheese slices for our Philly cheese steak sandwiches.  My friend has a mandolin and I wanted to try slicing it on that.  It's a Pampered Chef brand so it's a nice one, but mandolins aren't really made for cheese slicing because there's too much friction.  I struggled with a few slices and broke the nail on my thumb.  That should have been my warning to pick up a knife and cut the cheese the sensible way.  The next slice was really stubborn and I was holding the cheese too close to where I was cutting it and cut a big chunk of my thumb.  I was lucky that I didn't take off the whole fleshy part of the fingertip, about 1/4" was still attached.

 I knew right away I needed to go to the emergency room; it was deep, painful and wouldn't stop bleeding.  My friend insisted that I eat dinner first, then I had to drive myself to the ER down the road as Jason was at a priesthood meeting and Annmarie wasn't feeling well and didn't come with us.

At the ER I was admitted right away, but I had to wait for an x-ray to make sure I didn't hit any bone and then wait another hour for the doctor to come stitch me up as the ER suddenly became busy.  Jason eagerly left his priesthood meeting when he got a text from our friends and joined me to wait for the hour. 

In the ER before stitches.  On the right is the small part that wasn't cut.  By the way, the ER doc stitched me up over my lap on some blue towels (not the plastic-backed kind) and my dress was covered in blood.  I went home, soaked the dress right away and the blood came out.  But seriously?

 The doctor numbed the area with several injections using a tiny needle, which, I can honestly say hurt as much as childbirth.  Unfortunately, after all the painful injections, I felt the first and last of three stitches.  The top of the wound was right along the nail bed and I couldn't get a stitch there.

Sunday after coming home from the ER.  See the three stitches?   

I was advised to have the stitches removed after a week to 10 days and so I made an appointment with my plastic surgeon who had removed a mole on my leg.  He was disappointed in the quality of this doc's stitches indicating she had sewed cut flesh to old flesh instead of cut flesh to cut flesh; the healing would be prolonged and scarring would be bad.  Scarring is clearly important to plastic surgeons.  So he had me wait another 2 weeks before removing the stitches.

Three weeks later I am ready to have the stitches removed.

Now the stitches are gone but my thumb is misshapen and doesn't have a lot of feeling in the tip, except when I bang it on something it seems to hurt a great deal more than a regular thumb.  I have a really hard time buttoning stuff and dialing.  Good thing I don't text.  The plastic surgeon said I may or may not get the feeling back.  He also said he could take care of the bad stitching job and scarring if I wanted to come back in 6 months, have the wound recreated by cutting it open and have it stitched the proper way.  I'm thinking 'no.'

After stitches had been removed, see the misshapen lump at left.  The old skin will continue to dry and peel off.

I'm supposed to keep it moist for the next few months.  I've gone through a lot of the expensive kind of fabric fingertip band-aids.  Oh, and those are clean dishes in the background, okay?