Finding a needle not in a haystack
Robed up, hair covered, nestled under pre-warmed blankets, coddled on a pillowy mattress to die for, waking from a lovely pre-op nap, I’m relieved finally to ride the gurney into the operating theater. Two hours waiting on that mattress was enough. I’m more than ready for what’s next.
This moment was almost a week in coming. I worried the surgeon would cancel last minute. Being wheeled in means it’s too late for that.
The medical staff are warm and comforting; the surgical nurse squeezes my hand and murmurs comforting words as shots of anesthetic jab my right palm.
“Are you going to amputate it?” I quip to the surgeon, a dashing 40-something man who rebuilds hands and hips, and lord-knows what other body parts that go out of joint.
Amputation has been my go-to joke--or maybe my greatest fear?--for the past week, ever since a disturbing discovery. What I thought was a mere splinter was a shiv of an upholstery needle embedded from one side of my finger to the other. No wonder two courses of doxycycline and cefalexin barely kept the infection burning through my finger at bay. No wonder the end of my swollen digit throbbed and reddened.
Still, I had to laugh: an operating theater? A gurney? Three medical professionals hovering around me? Really? At a time when people die in the streets from lack of adequate medical care, this was ludicrous!
What had I done to cause this fuss? How had I skewered my finger and failed to notice?
An old leather recliner seemed a good candidate for moving to our new house out of state, if I could dismantle it. A close inspection was in order. Were the seat and the back one piece or two?
When in doubt shove your hand into places you can’t see, was my (former) rule of thumb. I plunge my right hand into the dark recesses of the chair; leading with the index finger, I blindly run my hand along the crevice. I feel the usual crumbs and spare change whose fate was to fall into the crease.
“Ouch!” A sharp pinch! I hustle to the wastebasket in the kitchen, dump my collection of crud, and then notice a little splinter sticking from the thumb-side of the finger. It brushes off easily, but there’s a tiny spot of blood. I wash it, apply bacitracin and a bandage. Done.
Next day, the finger looks red and swollen like a clown’s nose. It hurts. I go to Urgent Care. The practitioner hunts down any leftover splinter with an intense light that shines through skin.
“I think it’s out, but you have cellulitis,” she announces.
Ugh. Antibiotics for a week. We leave town sans recliner. Five days later the finger still throbs; the doxycycline is running out.
Better safe than sorry, so I go to the Urgent Care center in the new town. The practitioner takes an x-ray. “What a bright idea,” I think. “An x-ray rather than a flashlight!”
“You need a surgeon,” the laconic practitioner says, and prescribes a new antibiotic. “We’ll schedule you when they open on Monday.”
Meanwhile, I’m on pins and needles. Will the infection go to my heart or my brain? Will the nasty foreign object dislodge and cause irreparable harm? That night I have nightmares of being stuck in dark, inaccessible places, and awaken to my finger silently screaming.
Two days later the surgeon, dashing in his navy scrubs, commiserates with me and my finger, which by now is numb as an old twig.
“Now how shall we take this thing out of there, from the thumb side or the other side?”
“Uh, you’re looking at the x-ray, right?” I offer. “Do whatever you think is best.” In my mind amputation is still on the table. The nurse no longer squeezes my good hand. I’m left to face my fate.
“Here!” the surgeon exclaims a few minutes later. He hands me a plastic jar, the kind medical labs give you to pee in. From my puzzled expression he surmises that I think I’m supposed to give a urine sample.
“No, in the jar, there’s your needle.”
He’s my new hero.
I’d shake his hand, but my hand is swaddled like a colicky infant. “I hope we meet again, but not here,” I tell him.
“A lot of people say that,” he smiles.
I offer to get off the gurney and walk back to the room where my clothes are waiting. “I’ll wheel you,” says the attendant.
I dress, sign my discharge papers, and take my fickle finger of fate away from this theater of the absurd.