Monday, September 24, 2012

Out Comes the Tube

Monday, September 24, 2012

I just want to go play baseball and that's the ONLY thing I cannot do.  My mom let me stay home from school today to rest a little more because I was the Mayor this weekend.  Nah, really I had to catch up on my work because I was out since Thursday.  My dad called the doctor's office and said that the drain had collected nothing for the last two days.  The nurse called him back and said for either my mom and dad to pull it out, or I could come into the office to pull it out.  I decided to pull it out myself.  It wasn't bad, just stung for a second.  I went up to practice at school and talked to Coach.  I am bummed I can't play right now, but I can start working out next week after stitches come out and then the doctor said the rest is up to me!


I yanked this out myself!
 

Sunday, September 23, 2012

1st Weekend after Surgery Sunday

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Everyone finally left last night around 12 and I was able to get in bed and have a really good sleep.  I woke up this morning, and since I had taken so little of the prescription hydrocodone yesterday, my parents wanted me to try just taking Motrin and Tylenol today.  My mom asked me on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst, what my level of pain was and I told her it was a 3 or 4.  Plus, I was planning to go to school tomorrow and couldn't go or drive if I was still on the prescription pain meds. I took 4 Motrin every four hours.  That is 16 Motrin.  And I took 2 eight hour Tylenol Eight Hour twice, once at noon and the second time at 8.  That really did a good job on the pain.  I felt fine but just really tired. Maybe all the excitement has worn off and this is my let down.   No friends came over today.  It was just a chill kind of day.  I watched football and tried to catch up on my homework.  I am going to see if my parents can take my by the doctor and get this drain out.  Nothing has drained for over two days and my dressing is really loose.  Maybe they can redo that too!

Saturday, September 22, 2012

1st Weekend after surgery Saturday

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Instead of doing my usual run around I was stuck in my house, elevating my arm.  The good news is, all my friends came to see me throughout the day and night.  My hand was feeling much better and I only took the hydrocodone for the first time on Saturday at about four in the afternoon.  My hand did start aching as the day went on, but after the medication the soreness was gone pretty quickly.  My mom made a bunch of appetizers to get ready for the what she called "the night shift"of visitors.  She likes to do that for football games, especially when Clemson plays, and they were playing Florida State at 8PM.  Probably 30 different friends came and left my house over the last two days.  I didn't have time to think about my hand.  It made the time just sitting around go by so much faster than if I was just at home by myself!  I love my friends!!!  They are the best!  My aunt brought me two Bojangles chicken biscuits!  My favorite!  The Panthers, my team, won one game and lost one game, and I got kinda bummed again that I wasn't on the field playing. 

Friday, September 21, 2012

UHHHHHH!!!!!! The day after my surgery

Friday, September 21, 2012

I did get a decent night's sleep after that second dose of medicine last night, but my hand was already hurting when I woke up.  My mom made me breakfast and I took 2 more hydrocodone.  I mostly lay on my parent's bed and watched television today. My mom brought my food up on trays.  I was slowly getting the felling back in my hand and arm and could even move and wiggle my fingers.  The doctor had said that would be a while, so I was excited.  He had said it would be several days.  I could also open and close my fingers like the windshield wipers.  Dr. Perlik  told my mom that could take a good while and could be very difficult to do.  I was happy.  My mom changed the drain test tube and friends came over most of the day just to hang out. Doug brought me a milkshake. It was nice!  Throughout the day I really had no pain unless I tried to crunch my fingers into a fist.  That hurt!  Later after dinner, Luke Miller was over and my mom wanted to check my drain.  The tube was not half full yet, but she decided to go ahead and change it.  BIG mistake.  When she took the test tube with blood in it off, I felt nothing, but as soon as she tried to put the next one on, I felt excruciating pain at my incision.  She thought that maybe she had a bad tube or something was wrong with it so she decided to take it off and try another one.  ANOTHER bad idea!!!!  I had made such progress during the day and was feeling no pain and now this.  My mom called OrthoCarolina and found out they have an Urgent Care at the Matthew location.  My dad sped over there (they closed at 9:30).  I was furious.  This really hurt.  When we got there the PA we saw took the dressing off and looked at the incision site and the drain.
How my hand looked at Urgent Care when PA took dressing off.

 
The PA said it looked fine and was draining correctly.  Maybe there was not much more to drain and when my mom changed the test tube it was like holding a straw and putting your finger on the end.  The suction probably was pressing on nerves in my hand that were just coming back to life.  It still hurt like crazy, but obviously there was nothing wrong, so they put the soft dressing back on my hand.  It hurt for the rest of the night until I went to bed, pain medicine and all!

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Surgery Day Part 2 Home

Thursday, September 20, 2012

My mom drove me home after we left the surgery center and I wasn't tired at all so I just sat on the couch in the bonus room of our house.  I had to prop my arm up above my heart with the help of the "cheese" foam.  I had to move my whole arm with my right hand because my left arm was like dead weight and I still had no feeling in my hand or in my fingers.  They told me as soon as I started to have any sensation in my hand, as the nerve block wore off, to begin taking pain meds with the hydrocodone. I had a few friends come over to check on me, the first one being Logan.  I was feeling good....until about 8 o'clock and I felt pain like I've never felt.  I took one hydracodone at first.  The nurse told me I could take 2 every 4-6 hours, but I didn't know how I would react with it.  It is a mix of codeine and Tylenol.  My sister couldn't tolerate it at all after she had her wisdom teeth out and she felt like she was swallowing her tongue. I didn't want that to happen to me so I waited about 30 minutes for the medicine to kick in and it didn't even begin to touch the pain I was feeling.  I took another one and waited.  I also took 4 Motrin because the nurse told me to take that medicine also because it is an anti-inflammatory and would keep my hand from swelling to badly. My dad ended up giving me two more around 1 in the morning and that controlled the pain enough for me to go to sleep.

Surgery Day Part 1 Hospital

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Mom DID let me sleep in so I woke up around 9:30 this morning.  I took a shower and then my mom and I headed down the surgery center at around 10:30 so that we could arrive at 11:00.  I felt a lot of things at the same time on that ride down....nervous, angry that it happened, and the need to just be done with it so that I could move on and get back on the field. I love baseball more than just about anything.

After we parked on the first floor of the parking deck (at least something was going our way), we went to the check in area.  There they asked us a few questions, and gave both my mom and me surgery bracelets. They did that because at 16, I am still a minor.   My mom actually prepaid our portion of insurance of the surgery, which I thought was kind of weird since I hadn't even had the surgery yet.

The check in lady told us to sit in the waiting room and we would be called back soon.  Someone called my name and led my mom and me back to an area that had many little rooms but instead of doors, there were curtains that opened and closed.  A nurse named Martha came in and introduced herself.  She had me sit on the stretcher that was in the room.

Can you tell I am excited?!?!
                             




She asked all kinds of medical questions and entered the answers into a computer.  Things like "any drug allergies?" and "if we need to do a blood transfusion would my mom agree to it?". Then Nurse Martha left the room and came back with a "gown" ha ha and "non skid socks" for me to put on.  She took my clothes and put them in a locker. 


Look Ma!  No hands!

Once I had changed, Martha took my blood pressure and temperature.  It was really cold back there so she took two warmed blankets out of some cabinet and put them on me.  I felt calmer right away.  Then she inserted the IV into the back of my right hand since the surgery was going to be on my left hand.  It took her while to get the needle into the vein for the IV which was not a pleasant experience and she just kept talking to me and my mom like it was no big deal, but it wasn't her hand.  Anyway, I soon felt a coldness going through my veins, unlike anything I have ever felt before.  It's really hard to explain just how that felt. I was really glad to have those warm blankets.  Martha also placed a fall risk bracelet on my hand because I was going to be getting anesthesia. I don't know, but that just seems like common sense to me!

My IV

The next person that came to my little room was Dr. Chambers the anesthesiologist.  He told me that they were going to give me some drugs in my IV to relax me, kind of an anti-anxiety, amnesiac, and a sedative combined just to totally relax me before the surgery.  Then, when I went into surgery they would give me a nerve block.  They were going to insert a needle in my left shoulder with the medicine that would numb my arm for 12-24 hours.  He said it would feel like when you get numbed at the dentist for a filling or when your arm falls asleep at night, but it would last much longer.  I would feel NOTHING during and after surgery and that's a good thing.

After Dr. Chambers left, Dr. Perlik walked in.  He had obviously just gotten there because he was in his street clothes, not scrubs.  He examined my left hand, pressed on it in a few places, asking me if it hurt in certain spots.  When I said yes, he grabbed a purple marker and drew a zigzaggy kind of line on my hand and said this is how I am going to cut when I am in there.  Then he wrote Yett on my arm.
X marks the spot!
Dr. Perlik
 

We asked if I could have the hamate bone fracture that he was going to remove from my hand because I had decided to do my senior exit project on it.  He said it's considered live tissue, so he probably could not.  But he said he would take a picture of it after he removed it.   

The next person that came to my room was the nurse anesthetist or CRNA. She told me she would be administering both the "Happy Juice" and once we were in the operating room, she would administer the nerve block. The anesthesiologist oversees the CRNA and decides on dosage and medication, but the CRNA actually gives patients the anesthesia.  She was really nice and funny.  We talked about baseball because her five year old boy plays and all the crazy parents.

When it was time, she inserted the "Happy Juice" that she held in her hand in a syringe through my IV on the back of my hand.  I immediately felt warm and fuzzy inside and very relaxed.  The next thing I knew, they were wheeling me away and I was feeling really "HAPPY"!  My mom asked the CRNA if it really worked that fast and she said , "Yes, it begins working immediately!" and smiled.

Happy Harris!
I don't remember much of anything after I got the "Happy Juice".  I can remember someone pricking the needle in my neck to do the block, but it was kind of like watching it through a fog.  It didn't seem like it was happening to me.  I was in surgery for about an hour.  Dr. Perlick had originally said about 30 minutes.  My mom told me that Dr. Perlik came out after the surgery to tell her everything had gone well.  He said that after going in, his suspicion was confirmed that the fracture had not started last Wednesday at baseball practice and that it was not ten days old.  He again said that this happened a while ago and that day at practice was kind of like "the straw that broke the camel's back".  He said there was a little bit of fraying on the tendon, but it was minimal, did not need to be repaired, and that there was nothing to worry about there. He also said that my pinkie and ring finger would probably be numb for several days and I would not be able to open and close my fingers like a folding fan or windshield wipers.  He said that could take a while but he wanted me to move my fingers when I was able. Dr. Perlik said he really had to tug on and manipulate the ulnar nerve that runs right over the hamate bone to get that fragment (or hook) out.  He also told my mom that I would have to elevate my hand above my heart and rest for 3-4 days, preferably 4.  I was going to be given a prescription with hydrocodone, which is a narcotic drug that also contains Tylenol, for the pain and I could take it every 4-6 hours.  Dr. Perlick emailed me some of the photos of the suture line with the drain tube.  I think I have nine stitches if I counted right.
My incision with drain
He also sent me a photo of the excised hamate bone from my hand.  It is really small.  It's only a little bit larger than a millimeter.
Hook of Hamate after removal from my left hand!
The next thing I remember is sitting in another one of those rooms with a curtain, but it was a different one.  I was sitting in like a lazy boy chair with a big pink foamy block that resembled Swiss cheese.  It held my arm up.  I could not feel anything in my arm at all. A nurse gave me some peanut butter crackers and a diet coke.  I was able to eat and drink by myself, but I was still very groggy


They called my mom in and she discussed my discharge with Connie my discharge nurse.   She told my mom some of the same things that Dr. Perlik did.  She talked about how I have a splint and also bios wrap on my arm.  It is not hard like a cast and it forms to your body once it is stretched out.  If that were to get loose, I could just wrap an ace bandage around my dressing. She also talked about my drain.  I had no clue what she was talking about and since I could not move my arm, Connie reached under a thin gauzy layer on my dressing and pulled out a test tube with tubing attached.  This was the drain. I could see red blood inside the tubing and also inside the test tube. Once the test tube became half full of blood, I was going to have to change it.  Connie showed me and my mom how to do this.  Basically it is just pulling the old test tube off and then putting a new one on.  The test tube has a rubber stopper at the top and the piece attached to the drain tubing has a needle.  You push the needle through the rubber on the test tube and there is instant suction.  This pulls blood from incision away to reduce swelling and pain.  If anything other than red fresh blood came out into the test tube we were to call.  They want to make sure the incision site doesn't get infected.



Nurse Connie said to call OrthoCarolina with any questions and that there is always someone on call there.  She gave my mom the prescription for my medicine, told my mom to go get the car, put me in a wheel chair, and pushed me out of the surgery center to wait for my mom to pull around to take me home.


                                         

This is not my hand, but an actual photo of a doctor going in to do hamate surgery!


Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Waiting.......

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Now it's just the waiting that's driving me crazy.  I have been able to go to baseball work outs after school and do leg and core work and run.  I have even been throwing I have gotten a JV kid to catch the ball for me because I can't.  I wear a glove so I don't lose that sensation.  But my throwing arm feels great! I can work my abs and core at the baseball workouts after school, which is good.

When I got home today my mom said the nurse from OrthoCarolina called and went over some things before my surgery.  I was not have anything to drink tonight after midnight, and nothing the next morning before surgery. No water or anything! The nurse even told my mom to make sure when I brush my teeth tomorrow that I don't swallow any toothpaste or water.  When you are getting anesthesia this is a requirement.  I also can't wear deodorant to the surgery.  They have to have that whole area of my arm clean and sterile.  I have to wear a button down short sleeve shirt and pull on elastic shorts.  Really??????  I am going to look like such a loser.  The nurse told my mom that I would be hard to put a tee shirt on after surgery and it's easier to get elastic pants or shorts on and off while you are still groggy from anesthesia.  And she also said no one cares how you are dressed at surgery.  Whatever!  The nurse also wanted to confirm that it was the left hand that I would be having the surgery on.  My dad had said that when he and I went to see Dr. Perlik on Monday, my chart said it was an injury to my right hand, not the left.  I can't even imagine if they operated on the wrong hand. 

 I am going to see if my mom will let me sleep in so I won't be starving before my surgery.  It is at one o'clock tomorrow but we have to be there actually at 11:00AM.  I am getting a little nervous!

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Call from Ortho

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

 
My mom finally got a call from the scheduler at Ortho Carolina at around lunchtime .  The surgery was going to be at 1:00 on Thursday at CMC One Day Surgery.  It is going to be outpatient surgery, which means I don't have to stay overnight in the hospital.  The scheduler told my mom that I would have to be there two hours before the surgery to meet with anesthesiologist and take care of the insurance and other paperwork.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Meeting with the surgeon

Monday, September 17, 2012

I waited all weekend to finally get in to see Dr. Perlik, the surgeon who was going to do my hand surgery.  I drove with a friend from the Panthers to one of the games of our tournament this past weekend Sunday).  It was really hard to be there and not get to play. The coach from Wake Forest was going to come and watch me catch, and  I couldn' t because of this injury, so I was even more bummed. It was awful! Finally it was Monday at 1:30 and my dad and I were heading over to the Matthews office of Ortho Carolina to meet with the doctor.  He already had my x-rays, so he knew what we were there to discuss.  I told him my pinkie and ring fingers were numb. My pinkie and my palm had turned purple over the past few days and looked bruised. There was also more swelling in my hand.   Dr. Perlik did some tests to see if I could tell how many prongs he was touching the tips of my fingers with.  I wasn't exactly sure what he was doing at first so I watched.  He laughed and said, "Turn your head".  So I did.  I knew when he was touching my fingers with one or two prongs.  The reason he did this was to find out if there was any damage to the ulnar nerve which kind of works as a pulley for those fingers and runs right over the hook of the hamate that I had fractured.  I passed the test and he felt there was no tendon or nerve damage.  That was a relief.  But he said he needed to be really careful when he goes into my hand that he works around the ulnar nerve.  He also thought that I didn't injure my hand last Wednesday when I swung the bat.  He felt like I had injured it at some point before and this swing just really broke it.  He said that on my x-rays where the fracture is, it is kind of blurry.  If it was a recent break, it would have been a smoother and cleaner line.  I thought back to several times when my wrists hurt in the past couple of years and I had to tape them.  It could have been any of those times that I injured my hamate bone. 

 
 
We spoke a bit more with Dr. Perlick and he said pretty much the same thing as Dr. Boatright; do surgery to remove the hook, smooth down the rest of the bone and splint for ten days.  He said basically we will be waiting on the soft tissue to heal.  He also said it will be sore where the bone will be smoothed out.  I am usually pretty good with pain....I always have something that hurts going on with baseball!  He told us that someone from OrthoCarolina would call us tomorrow to schedule the surgery, which he felt could be this week.  I just want to get it over with now!

Thursday, September 13, 2012

The second day....

Thursday, September 13, 2012

How my hand looked day after injury.  Check out my pinkie!
I woke up this morning to a swelling and terrible pain in my left palm.  I had iced a lot last night and taken Motrin and my hand did not feel better at all!  My parents told me to go ahead and go to school and they would try to get me in to see a hand specialist at Ortho Carolina.  All I could think was, "This sucks" because I was playing Fall baseball for my year round travel team, the South Charlotte Panthers.  This was going to be a really important season and we were travelling down to Fort Myers, Florida in two weeks to play in the National Wood Bat Tournament.  We are a great team and last year we came in the top 8 and were playing the class of 2013 teams.   We really have a chance to win. Plus I had just had a great summer and more and more colleges are starting to show interest in me for baseball.

I went on to school, my hand hurt, but I could drive.  My parents texted me that they had gotten an appointment for me at 9AM that morning. (I know I am not supposed to have my phone on at school, but this WAS important!)  My dad picked me up and we went downtown to Ortho Carolina where I had an appointment to see a Dr. Boatright.  He used to be the head of hand surgery at Ortho, but because of his age, he still sees patients, but no longer does surgery.  Anyway, to make a long story short, Dr. Boatright asked me a bunch of questions about when the pain in my palm and wrist started and how it happened and what did it feel like.  After talking to him for a while, and telling him I thought I had hurt it on that one swing he sent me back to have my hand x-rayed.  Then we waited for the x-rays to be developed. 

We sat anxiously as the doctor picked up the first x-ray.  After he looked at the first one, he said, "I don't really see anything".  I almost heaved a sigh of relief until he picked up the second one.  "There it is.  You have a hamate hook fracture.  See it?", as he pointed out to exactly where on the x-ray he was describing.  Really?  I couldn't believe this.  Not only did I have a break in my hand, but this was something I had never even heard of before.  He went on to explain to my dad and me that this often happens to people who play sports like golf, tennis and baseball.  It happens supposedly in sports where you squeeze and then exert power with the hand.  Kind of like when you swing the bat really hard.  It is a bone that has a little hook on it in the base of the palm below the ring and pinkie fingers of the hand.  The hook can break when great pressure is put on that bone in sports where you grip because the hook of the hamate sticks up from the bone.

My only thought was, "How do we fix this and can I play through it?"  Dr. Boatright told me it is not a good idea to play through it because where the bone is fractured can cut like a serrated knife into nerves and tendons close by, causing major damage.  He felt like I had not sustained any damage to those since this only occurred the day before.  I was relieved but what next?  Dr. Boatright went on to tell us that hamate bone fractures used to be "fixed" by placing someone in an arm cast for 6-8 weeks and follow up with PT to make the arm and wrist strong again.  Basically the hope was that the fractured hamate piece would fuse with the rest of the hamate bone.  Usually, however, this did not work very well and injuries would happen again to the bone.  He told us that now, the best procedure is to have surgery, go in and excise the hook that is fractured, smooth the remaining bone and close it back up with stitches.  That is what he recommended for me.  He said I'd be in a splint for 10 days, and then get my stitches out.  He also said not to swing a bat for around three weeks.  After that, he said that basically it would be up to me as far as pain and how my hand felt.  I felt sick.  I couldn't go to Fort Myers in a few weeks because I would be in Charlotte recovering from hand surgey.  I was going to miss the Fall season.  Dr. Boatright suggested Dr. Perlik do my surgery.  He said that Dr. Perlick probably has the most experience with this type of surgery and he's probably the best.  He operated on my dad's broken thumb about 15 years ago and he also operated on Ronald Reagn's hand!  If he's good enough for Ronald Reagan, I guess he's good enough for me.  We made and appointment to see Dr. Perlik on Monday, September 17 at 2:00PM.

I was
 

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

So it began.........

September 12, 2012
Fall baseball practice.  Junior year.  I knew what to expect.  I had done this for the last two years.  It was the second week of fall practice at South Meck.  Today was a whole team scrimmage.  That means everyone who is coming out for baseball comes to the field where we are divided into two teams. This was supposed to be one of the fun days. I knew something was wrong the moment I swung the bat!!!  I hit a hard foul ball straight back  and it sent incredible pain up my left arm. My first at bat for the day! I dropped the bat.  My fingers just released the bat.  My palm was killing me and so was my wrist.  I ran up to the trainer so I could continue playing and got my wrist taped.  I finished the game and even got a triple, but it hurt like crazy.  When I walked in the door after practice, I told my dad what had happened.  He examined my left wrist and asked me what exactly happened and where it hurt?  When I explained that I just took a pitch funny, and swung the bat hard he said, "Sounds like the hamate."  "The what?" I said.  I had never heard of that before.  We iced my left hand and I took some motrin.  My dad told me to wait until morning and see how it felt.  He said if we had to we would go to the doctor and get it looked at.  I really wasn't concerned.  I have had sprained wrists, a pulled back and back spasms for months, tendinitis in my throwing arm and many other injuries associated with baseball.  This was not a big deal!  It would be better in the morning!!  I just knew it!


Below is a video I found on Utube that shows exactly where the hamate bone is in your hand.