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