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for those of you that have been following my saga I wanted to give you an update on the state of my thumb, if this is a new story line to you then you can catch up here before continuing.
After much badgering of my GP and the appointments clerks at my local hospital I finally managed to see a specialist hand surgeon for an opinion as to what could be done about my hand.
He sucked his teeth in obvious irritation and said that I should have been refered within a week of the injury and that he would be writing a strongly worded letter to my GP advising him of his displeasure. He then said that there were two lines of thought on late presenting nerve damage, the first being to go ahead and operate as soon as possible anyway and the other to allow any scar tissue to form and inflammation to dissipate before attempting surgery.
The kindly surgeon then refered me for X-Rays whilst he went off and spoke with some colleagues for further opinion. Mr Surgeon came back to me a short while later to say that he wanted me to see a different surgeon at the plastics hand clinic at another hospital on the other side of town the following morning.
Being in agony after kindly first Mr Surgeons manipulations, pokes and proddings as well as the thought of rush hour traffic I decided that public transport was the order of the day to get across London for my early appointment, this was needless to say as unpleasant as can be expected of any brush with London’s transport system and I spent the majority of the journey with my nose wedged firmly in the armpit of a fellow commuter whilst trying my best to read my kindle.
On a minor aside this was the first time I’ve taken rush hour public transport in some time and I was amused to count four other kindle readers within a radius of a couple of metres, they’re obviously taking off.
Anyway I’m waffling, I made it to my appointment on time even though I’d given myself plenty of extra time to arrive early, I checked in and was seen relatively quickly, by NHS standards anyway by a specialist nurse, who repeated much of the previous days excruciating poking and prodding as well as tests to establish relative muscle wasting and retained strength as well as examining my X-Rays from the previous day.
He then disappeared for the best part of an hour with brief revisits to inflict more pain and ask more questions before reappearing with another slightly less kindly but equally professional looking Mr Surgeon who explained to me that he believed that I had indeed partially severed a branch of my Median Nerve which he also gave a very long and complicated name and also suffered a minor fracture of my thumb at the joint where I had managed to stab myself.
He also promised to dictate a strongly worded letter to my GP about the importance of quick referrals in cases of suspected nerve injuries. He then went on to say that in consultation with his registrar Kindly Mr Surgeon number one, he believed that the fracture had now healed itself and that there was now too much scarring and inflammation of the muscles surrounding the nerve for surgery to be immediately successful and that he would be referring me for physiotherapy before re-assessing me in a couple of weeks.
He also recommended that I regularly massaged the wound site and my hand with moisturiser, and try to use the thumb as much as my pain threshold will allow.
So that’s where we are, I am waiting for them to get in touch with physio appointments and follow-up appointments whilst continuing to consume vast quantities of analgesics.
Many thanks for all the kindly messages of support I’ve recieved and also extra special thanks go out to Mrs Bunny Chow for putting up with my extra grumpy self.
TTFN
Mr Bunny Chow
The life and photography of Mr Bunny Chow 