Two Hours in the ER, Ten Stitches Later

So Steven went to play basketball on Sunday with the guys from church, like he always does. He wasn't there more than fifteen minutes when I get a call from him saying he had hurt himself and they were headed to the ER.

So here is what happened: He was trying to get the ball away from his friend Brian...Steven swung his hand around and jammed his left index finger into Brian's elbow. He hyper-extended his finger and it popped the backside of his finger open. Steven said it didn't hurt, but he looked down and saw blood. He thought maybe he had scratched Brian or something but pretty soon he realized it was his blood (probably from the fact that it didn't stop bleeding). He looked down at his finger and saw the INSIDE of his finger. He showed Brian (Brian's a doctor) and Brian thought he could stitch it up right there so he ran to get a suture kit in his car. Another guy came over and looked at it and yelled to Brian, 'I can see the bone!' So Brian thought instead, to take Steven to the hospital.

So I met them there and got all checked in. Thankfully Brian works at St. Lukes so he knew all the good doctors and nurses and got us well taken care of. It was pretty funny, Steven had to explain how his injury happened about 30 times. No one would believe him. He had to explain it at least twice to each person. He even had to get a tetanus shot in case he actually cut his finger on something. Then he had to get an x-ray, thankfully no broken bones, just a bad sprain. And then they had to come and irrigate it out and make sure all the tendons were working properly. It was a real blessing that they were. They said that most of these injuries snap or cut the tendons, which requires hand surgery. But everything looked good so the doctor stitched him up with ten stitches and sent us on our way.

And Brian totally rocks! We don't have to go back to the ER like they wanted us to to check on it and get the stitches removed because Brian's gonna do that for us. That'll save a bunch of money! Thanks Brian!

Steven did really well through the whole ordeal. He has a very high pain tolerance and tells me that it just feels like he jammed his finger. But oh man, not me! I get so sick in hospitals, so bad that I about passout. I have to sit way far away from everything and I for sure couldn't look at his finger. Totally grosses me out! I have always been really bad in hospitals. So now his hand is all wrapped up and he can't bend his finger for two weeks. Which totally sucks because he works with his hands all day so its been pretty slow going.

So here are some pictures of the whole ordeal. The first two are with my camera on my phone. The other one is from this morning when I was changing his dressing, so the swelling has gone down a lot on his finger. You should have seen it before. It was HUGE! And a WARNING to all those with weak stomachs, there is a picture in there of his stitches that's nasty.