Scott's Surgery

So two years ago we took a family vacation with some friends to San Diego.  We were planning on going a day early to spend our first day with Scott's best friend from high school who lives near San Diego.  We packed the car the night before so we could take off early.  All that was left to pack was the cooler.  The next morning, I was upstairs with the kids getting ready.  Scott was going to get the cooler off the top shelf in the garage and run to the store to get ice.  All of the sudden I heard him screaming my name from downstairs.  I ran down and opened the door to the garage.  Scott was sitting on the floor of the garage holding his hand covered in blood.  While trying to get the cooler (the garage door was closed) he lost his balance and fell against the garage door.  He reached his hand out and sliced his hand open on the metal part of the door.  So our San Diego trip started out with a trip to the ER.  Luckily he was home from the ER by 10:30 (a sign of a good place to live is when you walk in the ER on a Saturday morning and it's empty).  When Scott got home he insisted on still taking our vacation.  He was a trooper.  Let's remember: San Diego = beaches, oceans, pools at the hotel; Stitches = no water for Scott.  And he was left with this lovely scar:

Fast forward two years.  Scott severed a nerve with the fall.  He went and saw a hand specialist and they decided to wait for surgery.  Occasionally the nerves will grow back together or not cause as much pain.  This didn't happen for Scott.  His pain has gotten increasingly worse.  You couldn't even touch his hand (and it's his right hand) without sending shooting pains through his hand.  Think how often you shake hands with people.  He decided it was time for surgery.  

When a nerve gets severed, it will try to grow back together.  What happened in Scott's case is that it couldn't find the other end.  So it starts growing in multiple directions looking for the other nerve ending.  What he ended up with was a ball of nerves that the doctor described as looking like the top of a mushroom.  So they went in through the scar and found the neuroma.  They then went up a little bit to cut it out.  They buried the end of the nerve into some muscle pretty deep.  That should prevent it from trying to grow again.  Final result: no more feeling in his right thumb and area around it.  But he'll take that over the pain.

I was pretty nervous about surgery because he's never had it before.  He's never been put under.  And he's involved with a case where a guy went in for same day surgery and died before they even started operating from the anesthesia.  But, he came through a champ.  Although I have to admit that it's a pretty sweet moment when your husband's coming out of it and looks up at you and gets teary eyed.  Nothing like drugging your husband to get their real emotions.

I love my Scottie!  He's the best.  You'd never know how much pain he was in or even that he just had surgery yesterday.  He is such a great person to be around.  I'm so lucky!