Chase's Finger

On March 1st Chase jammed his finger during the first game in his basketball tournament. He went on to play two games after that. By the time we left for home, his finger was swollen and the base of his nail had begun to bruise. We assumed he would lose his nail eventually. No big deal.

The following Thursday while playing basketball, he bonked the jammed finger with the ball and it bled. Still no big deal, other than he got pulled out of game because he was getting blood all over everyone.

By the Thursday after that, the finger was quite swollen and was becoming painful. We decided we needed to take him to the doctor to get an antibiotic since he apparently picked up an infection after it opened up and bled. The doctor suspected it may be fractured, so he took an x-ray of it. He couldn't tell if it was fractured, so he called in the orthopedic doctor. He diagnosed a fracture of the growth plate in the first joint of his finger. He started us on a course of antibiotics to bring down the swelling so we could decided what to do with the fracture.

After being on the antibiotics for a week, the doctor still wasn't pleased with the amount of swelling and infection, fearing it may spread to the bone, so he decided to cut it open and clean it out. He schedule Chase for surgery later that morning. They ended up having to use general anesthesia on him. During surgery, Dr. Lister removed the base of Chase's fingernail where the hematoma was, cleaned it all up, reduced the bone back into place, stitched the remainder of his fingernail on for protection, and stitched the finger up. He came back from surgery with a big wrapped up finger.

This is what his finger looked like a week after surgery at our post-op appointment.

Dr. Lister changed the dressing on the finger and scheduled us to come back April 7th. He will most likely remove some of the stitches at that time. Chase continues on the antibiotics.

It's possible the end of his finger won't grow any longer if the growth plate is damaged. It will most likely grow in breadth, though. Dr. Lister says there is no way to tell for sure at this point.

Please pray that the growth plate heals nicely and "remembers" how to grow.

Sometimes it isn't the greatest thing to have a kid that doesn't acknowledge pain.

"He winks with his eyes, he shuffles his feet, he points with his fingers." Proverbs 6:13