Nicky’s Left Hand – Before and After Surgery

Hello friends, family and everyone interested in seeing how Nicky’s left hand surgery went!

I finally have time to do this blog post… Here Goes!

This photo below is a photo of his hand BEFORE surgery. It shows quite clearly his four fingers and the ‘pinky’ is all, as we say, “webbed in”.

Here’s the hand POST surgery, he has a pinky now! Yey!!!

The reason why Nicky wanted his pinky ‘fished out’ was not because he needed it for anything, but the problem with it being webbed inside the hand was that it made it impossible for him to move his wrist much without a considerable amount of pain.

OK, now, on to his thumb: Below is a picture of his thumb BEFORE surgery.

His thumb was very much ‘in’ the palm, preventing him to use his hand to pick up things or play video-games well, which is his motivation for doing the surgery to begin with. We have no problem keeping his three middle fingers separated and useful thanks to the wrapping, but the thumb has given us problems. The scar tissue that Nicky has on his hands becomes extremely dry and extremely thick-it wants to web the fingers in relentlessly. We change the bandages on his hand every 3rd day and we do use Vaseline gauze on each finger to keep the skin moist under the bandages regardless if he has wounds or not. Our new routine with hand bandaging includes soaking the hands in water to soften the skin and then soak it again in coconut oil to let the moisture soak in. We do some Physical Therapy on the hand as well… (see photo at the end of this post). We also use a splint at night to maintain the web space between the thumb and the rest of the hand.

OK, so, here’s the picture of the hand POST surgery!

Dr. Panossian did an awesome job! We did not want his whole hand denuded of skin, he took a skin graft from under his arm like we asked, which is an area that is rarely if ever wounded and easy to wrap, which meant his thumb was healed within the 2 weeks while it was in a cast, as was the area the skin graft was taken from. Amazing!

So… here’s a photo from the book ‘Courage Under Wraps‘ that shows us doing some Physical Therapy on his right hand which had surgery 18 months ago. It still looks great.