The Finger Incident

The Middle Finger To Be Exact

A few weeks after returning home from camping we experienced something I like to refer to as "The Finger Incident".

J woke-up that morning complaining that his hand "hoot" and was burning. As the day progressed we realized his entire middle finger was swelling rather quickly and changing color. A dark red ring began to spread across his hand as it also swelled. By this time he was screaming and crying in excruciating pain. We rushed him to another local Children's Hospital Emergency Room. Nobody knew what was going on with his hand. They were concerned about the severe swelling cutting off the circulation to his finger. They immediately started an IV and began administering steroids and antibiotics intravenously. They admitted J into the hospital, ordered x-rays and called for a consult with the pediatric surgeon.

During the night the same giant watery blisters that had formed on his foot while camping began forming on the finger. Oddly enough they first appeared as two or three single blisters along the side of his finger and then began to merge into one giant blister as they grew larger and larger. It was a fairly quick process... within a couple of hours he went from no blisters to one huge giant blister along the whole side of the finger. This blister increased J's pain and discomfort significantly. It also increased our concerns about circulation being cut off.

The Surgeon showed up early the next morning. He had the results from the x-rays taken the previous night. He reported the good news that there appeared to be no fractures, no broken bones and that the circulation in the finger seemed to be unobstructed. However, he was bothered by the development of the giant blister and the fact that the steroids had not yet reduced any of the swelling. They had outlined the perimeter of the swollen red area with an ink pen in order to track the increase or decrease of inflammation. The swelling and redness had actually increased beyond the markings from the night before. The surgeon decided he was going to lance the blister in order to relieve pressure on the finger.

The nurse came in and gave J a large dose of painkillers a whole 5 minutes before the procedure began. I asked the surgeon about numbing the area first, but they said the injections required would be just as painful as the procedure itself. They asked me to help pin J down to the bed and hold his other arm still. Through the screams and sobs the surgeon used a scalpel to lance and drain the fluid from the blister. I watched in horror as he then pinched the loose skin of the blister between two of his gloved fingers and proceeded to rip it off! It was brutal and I certainly wasn't prepared for it. I felt like offering my own middle finger up for close examination. The nurse wasn't prepared for it herself as she later admitted when she came back in to coat the wound in antibiotic ointment. Necessary or not... it wasn't an easy thing to witness.

They continued with the IV steroids and antibiotics through the night. It was frustrating to find new blisters beginning to form on the opposite side of the same finger the next morning. Fortunately the swelling in his hand had decreased enough that the surgeon no longer had any concerns about circulation and left those blisters alone.

All in all we wound up spending a total of 5 days in the hospital before the doctors were satisfied that J's hand... and middle finger... were out of danger. They discharged him and sent us home. Somehow we managed to make it through the next few months of winter without any other major complications.