KG's Hideaway

6-21-05 2:24am

It's been a pretty hectic week around here. Last Wednesday, the pain in Austin's hand was so bad that he couldn't stand it any longer. He actually left the speedway DURING a race (anyone that knows my boy knows he wouldn't leave a race event for anything.... so this was bad) in TEARS and got home. I called the doctor the next morning and begged for a quicker appointment, but because the xrays didn't show any fractures in his hand, they didn't see any reason to expedite his visit, so my primary care physician (someone I've known since we were in the 5th grade) got him in to see another orthopedic surgeon. He walked in to the exam room and within 5 minutes diagnosed Austin with compartment syndrome.

I had to attend a seminar on compartment syndrome when I was in nursing school, so I was pretty confused. It is usually something that can happen when you get a compound fracture of one of the long bones in the body (femur, tibia and fibula). The fluids build up and once the skin can't stretch anymore, the fluids start putting pressure on the veins, arteries and nerves. The pain becomes excruciating and nothing will help it. They have to then go into surgery and bifricate the limb. My patient had compartment syndrome on his lower leg, so they bifricated the skin on both sides of his shin... all the way down. Imagine having two wounds, each extending from your knee to your ankle and being left open, with stitches allowing the skin to remain open by about an inch and a half wide all the way down. This allows the fluid to drain and eventually they sew the skin back up. I was confused as to how Austin had acquired this.

When he jammed his ring finger, his friend offered to "pop it out" and when he did it Austin said he heard it pop two or three times. But when we went to the ER, there were no fractures, so they splinted it and told us to call an orthopedic surgeon if it wasn't better in two or three days. By that Sunday, we knew it was bad, but he was in agony by Tuesday night. Wednesday, when we got to the doctor at 1:15 and he was in Surgery by 4. Thank God Craig left work to be with me because I was a mess. I held it together for Austin, but the doctor had told me that there was a good possibility that the damage to his radial nerve could jeopardize the use of that hand. Craig was giving a presentation to the vice president of his company, and when he got my call he was really nervous about walking out of that meeting, but thankfully the VP told him to "get out of here" and was great about it. (My husband works for a GREAT company and they take very good care of us!)

So Austin is getting prepped for surgery and he's hurting so bad that he doesn't care about the needles they are sticking him with (he's TERRIFIED of needles). While we were trying to get him registered, he was hurting so bad that he was pacing the lobby of the hospital. So they get a needle in and start giving him some morphine, but he's hurting so bad that it's just not helping. They were really pushing hard to hurry him into surgery, but the paperwork was frustrating everyone. Finally, as he's almost writhing in pain they get enough meds into him to calm him down... and that started to let the morphine work.

I kissed him on the forehead as they rolled him away, and I realized I felt much better now that I knew he wasn't in pain. I realized that it wasn't the surgery that had me so worried (though as a mom, that was certainly part of it!) it was seeing him hurting so much that bothered me. The surgery took about an hour and a half, and during that time Craig ran home and got all my stuff and Austin's things so that we had everything we needed for the night.

When he was taken to recovery they let us go in, but again his pain levels were so high and when I was near him he kept trying to talk to me. So I told him that we were going to go up to his room and wait for him, hoping that he'd just close his eyes and let the meds help him. They brought him up about 45 minutes later and he was still hurting. They gave him morphine through most of the night and by 8am the next morning he was on vicodin only. His girlfriend also spent the night with me at the hospital and they evidently had a great time listening to me talk in my sleep (both of my kids and I all tend to be quite talkative in our sleep anytime we're under the least bit of stress!!) All in all, it went well.

He doesn't get the stitches/cast off until Monday, but he's got to go take a test at Tarleton tomorrow and then Wednesday morning he has to be back there for three days of Freshman Orientation. They are staying in the dorms for that so at least he won't be driving back and forth each day, but he's still hurting pretty badly, so I don't know how he'll do. I don't want to send him with a bottle of vicodin, but I also don't want to take the hour drive each way to take it to him if he needs it. I guess I'll just send him with a few.

Tomorrow, Ryan has to go to the orthopedic surgeon again for her foot. It appears that she'll need to have surgery for the stress fracture on her left foot. It heals, but it keeps breaking and then she plays basketball on it anyway. We've got to go to Atlanta in two weeks and then to New Orleans right after that, both for basketball tournaments... then I guess she'll have to take the time off for surgery. But I'm hoping we'll get good news tomorrow instead.

Night night! kdgr