Saturday, June 05, 2010

We Almost lost a thumb...

Before surgery...

Matthew Ray and his daddy were doing "man stuff" and working in our storage room this past week. They had just finished cleaning up the storage room and putting up a shelf. Matthew Ray was proud of his work and went to shut the storage door like a real man (very hard). When he did, his left hand was on the door facing and he slammed the door on his thumb. He began screaming and then I heard Matt screaming. I ran into see blood everywhere and Matt screaming that we had to "GO NOW!" We debated which hospital as we were going down our elevator and decided that the one that is a 60 second run from our house was best. Matt took off running while I went back up to our apartment to get our phone.
When we were all in the ER the nurse told us that a hand surgeon would be coming to us from the hand clinic in the hospital. I thought to myself very sarcastically, "yeah right..like there is really a hand surgeon here and an actual hand clinic!!" A few minutes later a doctor walked in and told us he was a hand surgeon and explained how he will do Matthew Ray's surgery to sew back on his thumb. They got him settled in his room and got his pain under control with the help of some meds, cartoons and good friends to keep him preoccupied.
They came to take him to surgery and that was really hard for me and Matt....to see our little one go away screaming and know he was about to be put to sleep was scary. About 30-45 minutes later he was out of surgery, screaming but doing fine. The doctor came in to give us instructions and to tell us about the surgery. He pulled out his computer and showed us all of the thumb surgeries he had done here in Egypt. I was amazed at how so many of them looked like Matthew Ray's thumb but of course with darker skin! :)
I am so amazed at how God provided just the right hospital and surgeon just seconds away from our house. HE is so good..so good..and we are grateful.
Now we will follow up this week with the surgeon and then we have to follow up in the states with an orthopedic. THAT is what is hard...so far the docs in the states won't let us make an appointment because they don't have the ER notes and x-rays from Egypt...oh joy...I am going to miss the ease and convenience of some things in Egypt...just sayin..:)

The day after surgery...


Two days later...