Vic and I bought a new home at the beginning of March & we had planned on moving in by the first of April. All of the remodel projects we had taken on were taking way longer than planned & we had been spending every night at our new home working late so we could still move on time. On the Monday before our big move Vic decided to wake up early & go over to the house at 4am to finish our new wood floors. He didn't tell me of these plans as he thought it would be a nice surprise for me to have it done & not have to worry about it. 1/2 hour into working he cut off 2 fingers and half way into his thumb. He didn't have his phone so he calmly ran out to get a neighbor, thinking he might pass out from all of his blood loss. About 4 doors down someone was scraping their window so he called out to them to have them drive him to the hospital. The neighbor was shocked & just stared so Vic ran back inside to pick up his fingers, went to get into his truck, & remembered he might need a change of clothes so ran back inside to get his backpack, & then finally drove to the hospital at 80 miles an hour. He must have been confused as he didn't park at the Emergency entrance & was ringing the bell at the main entrance to try to get into the hospital. Finally a policeman came out & escorted him over to the ER. The hospital staff sent a policeman to come get me so at 5am I woke up to banging on the front door. I was nervous to answer such an abrupt banging! When he saw me peeking out the window he finally yelled "Police! Open the door!". This scared me even more!!! He told me that my husband was down at the ER & that I needed to get down there. I realized Vic wasn't in bed with me, but I figured he fell asleep with one of the kids in the night so I told the policeman that he had the wrong house as my husband was downstairs! I was annoyed that they waited until I got down there to rush him off to the airport so I could sign my financial life away & give them our insurance card.
They then drove him in an ambulance to the Idaho Falls airport, AirMed flew them to SLC airport, and then another ambulance ride to the University of Utah Hospital. (This bill was $1200 each ambulance & $45,000 for the flight!!!)
Dr. Gociman (a hand specialist surgeon) called me to make sure I was okay with him attaching Vic's fingers even though Vic cut right through the joint so if the fingers took we would have had to go back 6 months later for joint replacements & even with his fingers back on, they'd never be the same. I was okay with that because that is what Vic wanted and if it was myself, I'd want the same too. Dr. Gociman told me it would take 5 hours to do the surgery. Then when they called to give me my first update during surgery the nurse said it was going slow & not to worry as these type of surgeries can take up to 8-10 hours. Well, 8 hours later & they told me it'd be another 4 hours, then another 4, then another 4! It took 21 hours all together! I was so worried about him being under for that long & that the same surgeon had been working for that long. They informed me that surgeons never switch once they have started as it is then their baby that they follow through to the last appointment. Vic was under for so long that it took 3 hours for him to come out of sedation. He was so happy to be so well rested and was being really annoying yelling out to others & laughing, pointing, & telling me to check out other snoring patients.
At this point Dr. Gociman told me that the surgery was a failure as he got the arteries attached that push blood into the finger, but the veins were too torn up to reattach them so he's grafted one from his hand, but it didn't seem to be working either. He told me he could go back in & cut them off or after 2 weeks of leech therapy then the body should grow back their own veins. He said it would be a long painful process of close monitoring, 3 blood transfusions, & live leeches continually sucking the blood out. He also said if Vic was old or out of shape he wouldn't try it, but since he was the picture of perfect health, he wanted to try it. I agreed as we were already invested into it this far & after the plane ride & surgery I figured we'd already reached our out of pocket maximum so financially it was about the same. (I didn't remember to think about Vic being on unpaid leave for a month at this point!)... but hey if it would've worked, it would've been worth it.
Here is Dr. Gociman. He was such a nice guy that came & checked on us twice a day & each time spending quite awhile with us explaining & re-explaining everything to us. (Vic kept forgetting everything)
Cindy came down to wait with me during the 1st surgery. I was so glad she was there as it was stressful. She is a such a good sister; she was just as worried & stressed as I was.
Almost immediately after Cindy left the anesthesia finally started wearing off & Vic was going crazy. He was in a crazy amount of pain & the nurses didn't communicate how much pain he was in to the pain team so he suffered through the night with them doubling up & giving him all sorts of morphine, IV meds, neuro pain meds, muscle relaxers, & other heavy pain meds. This is when I took over putting on the leeches because every time someone bumped him it restarted the pain & it didn't look like rocket science. Most of the nurses had never done it before either. I tried & was a natural so Vic wouldn't let any nurses touch him after that. Also, I felt like a birthing coach helping him breath through the pain all night/day. The next day the pain team came in & gave him other types of meds, but nothing seemed to be helping much. His nurse told him they'd given him enough pain meds to knock out a rhino so she was amazed he they didn't kill him.... that really didn't make me feel good as I'd already been panicking inside that they were giving him more than his body could handle. They added another IV to his poor arm to give him ketamine, a drug that causes hallucinations, but works good. At this point they couldn't get it started because Vic was gagging & ready to vomit so he had to endure pain longer until he could get his stomach settled. On top of all of this Vic was sweating like crazy because the entire time we were there we had to keep the room temperature between 80 and 85 degrees!
The doctor had told us that if the fingers were going to fail then they probably would in the first 24 hours. On Wednesday the index finger started to lose blood flow so they decided to do surgery again to reconnect the artery. They scheduled him for surgery & figured while he was under they'd give him a nerve block to the hand to stop the pain.
I had just spent 3 days with hardly any sleep & while I was in the operating waiting room I emotionally started to fall apart. I was a sobbing mess waiting in the waiting room by myself. I prayed for comfort from God, but got none so I melted into a bigger mess. I think my brain was so far past working right!
Trish, Vic's sister-in-law could tell I was distressed by a post I had made & drove down in the middle of the night to support me. (Seriously a life saver as I needed a hug & someone to share my burden.) I am tearing up just thinking about it.
The doctor came out & told me the surgery was another failure so he amputated the finger. :*( I was so sad for Vic & a bit annoyed that I had to be the one to tell him the news every time. He seemed very numb & non responsive. He cried for the first time this night & it hurt my heart strings. I had a million emotions of my own I was working through, but Vic is truly my other half & I felt his every physical & emotional ache right along with him. :( They also told me that Vic threw up in surgery so he'd be under additional watch for aspirations in his lungs. I was desperate for sleep at this point (about 2am) so I drove out to my sister-in-law's house. I was so distressed about Vic's loss that I didn't recognize how tired I was and fell asleep on the way there. It scarred me half to death & helped me realize how people fall asleep at the wheel!
The next day, Trish & I went back to the hospital after a short night of sleep & found Vic in extreme pain again with an ignorant nurse that had fallen behind and not given him pain meds or got his leech on in time so his finger was all dried up & I had to pry the gauze off & scrub down his finger to get the blood going again for the leeches to attach. I demanded the pain team come back in & they ordered another block & more meds. It took HOURS for the anesthesiologists to get there. Trish was such a good sport & massaged & helped soothe Vic as much as she could while we waited. Vic started crying again & calling out to God to lessen the pain.... again making me an emotional mess. I felt a tiny bit of what Jesus must have felt in Gethsemane. When the pain team finally arrived they came in & saw his extreme pain & decided to do a 3 day block up by his neck instead so we could keep him out of pain longer. Thank goodness! Poor Vic had been without sleep for days at this point! He tried to get sleep, but every time he relaxed enough to sleep he stopped breathing & all of the monitors would beep at him to breath so as much as he tried he never got rest plus he always had me & one or two nurses in there at all times doing one thing or another to him. At this point the nurses had nicknamed me the leech whisperer and telling me to switch careers into trauma care... no way, my job is much calmer & nicer than a dirty hospital atmosphere!
Thursday night was the first time he was out of pain & I finally got to talk to my husband for the first time since Sunday night. Billie, one of his best friends, came to visit him & that really helped to lift his spirits & start to talk & be more normal. I was glad Billie didn't have to see him during the pain. I was too emotional to think to get a picture of Trish or Billie. (sad for my scrapbook!) Vic & I stayed up until 2am finally talking & being able to sort through our emotions of everything that had happened the last 4 days. We were hoping for a good night's sleep, but we only got sleep from 2-4am & 6-730am when a nurse woke us up panicking about Vic's middle finger failing... just when we thought we were in the clear of all of this emotional drama! She said she'd paged the surgeon 3 times so we sat & fretted until he came in at 8:30. I was so sad & frustrated, but the surgeon came & said it was only normal swelling & his skin turning white from prolonged wetness. Phew, that was a relief so Vic was ready to go back to sleep, but then the pain therapy team came in, another surgeon for consult, nurses for meds, physical therapy tried to make him stand up & move, but he couldn't, more meds, and then lunch (and leech therapy between all of that)! I swear they never let him rest! He finally got a 2 hour nap, but his nurse just woke him up & told him he can only sleep at night so his body won't get confused & made him move around a bit. His blood count was dropping fast & he was too light headed to even stand up so they ordered a blood transfusion.
The next day, Friday, Elder Camargo (an area authority down in Columbia where my cousin is serving a mission) came and gave Victor a blessing. He was very sweet & uplifting and made Vic feel really positive about life & that everything was going to be okay. Elder Camargo was even nice enough to come back & check on Victor again the next week.
On Thursday & Friday my Mom, Mark, & my mom's ward moved our stuff as was originally planned. My mom had INEL interns coming to live with her & needed her basement back. I also didn't want my kids there with a stranger so I drove up to pack the kid's bags & send them over to Trish & Jesse's house for the next week.
Josh came down to babysit Vic while I was gone. For some weird reason Victor suddenly was obsessed with cheesy jokes making him feel better so all week long he'd been requesting jokes from his parents online & the nursing staff. Vic's block wore off while Josh was there & he had another episode of pain, but Josh is very much like his Dad & full of jokes that helped Vic through better than any coaching or massaging I'd done. I was so grateful for that! :) Also, Vic's body amazingly started making enough blood to keep up with his loss so they never did the blood transfusion. His surgeon seemed baffled by this & stumbled through saying it was a miracle. I fully believe it :)
While I was home I continued to be an emotional mess as I realized how much still needed to be done on the house, how much work it'd be when I saw a sea of unlabeled boxes everywhere, and how much I missed my kids. I wanted to stay home forever & never go back to this dreaded room & wish it all away. Thankfully Vic's sister Julie drove over to help me organize our house a bit & put things together. I also managed to get a flat tire so Justin changed it to the spare & Mark went & had it fixed while I worked on the house. When I got back down to the hospital Vic had his cute niece Jessa, and her boyfriend there to visit..... again, every visitor he had really cheered him up. I was feeling really grateful for all of the help we'd gotten & the visitors that cheered Vic up, but I had to run to get keys from my friend before she went to bed & got in a car accident (fender bender) on the way back. I couldn't believe it. My brain just wasn't ticking right & I was such a wreck that the other car said not to worry about it & to get back to the hospital. They were more worried about me than they were their car that had black streaks all down it... such a blessing!
Vic started walking after a week & since they had his pain under control & no leering blood transfusion he finally got to be moved out of the intensive care & into a normal hospital room. The doctor said that would be good to get Vic off of all of the monitors, but that it'd be more work for us to keep on top of making sure the nurses kept up with the leeches, therapy, meds, & changing the bandages... so a happy, but frustrating move! I was very glad to get out of that room. It was so hot & stinky. Also, this is the day we finally contacted Vic's work & had to work on all of the paper work for release time. It was frustrating to realize we'd have no income for awhile & we'd gotten our first massive bill in the mail so we were feeling a bit down. Elder Camargo came back for another visit & that helped cheer Vic up a bit.
Vic's old boss from Michael's came to visit & all of them were very supportive through all of this. They sent him this nice plant & balloons. The little package was from his sister Kaylene that felt terrible she couldn't be there to help. (She lives in Virginia).
We were starting to feel good again until the surgeon came in to check on Vic at 5:30pm and he panicked at the sight of Vic's finger turning so purple and saying how bac it looked. He had me put another leech on & it looked better, but not the best. That low was just settling in when another of Vic's best friends came to surprise him for a visit. I'll never understand the silly strong bond between these two, but you can sure bet Vic was happy for days after Justin came!
While Justin was here Vic was really happy & it was the most he had takled about his accident so I was glad to get more details.
Vic's surgeon had been worried about Vic's purple finger so he came back in at 9 at night in his street clothes! (He was always so nice.) He thought it still looked too purple so he added more heparine (blood thinner) and increased the leech therapy. That was a major downer because we are supposed to be weaning off the leeches, not increasing them. He changed Vic's bandage & twisted his finger straighter & that made Vic's pain shoot back up. He also said to watch the finger very close to check for color. It was such an emotional day of ups and downs!!!
That night the nurse checked his finger a million times & put lots of leeches on so he lost too much blood & had to have a blood transfusion the next morning. We were a bit bummed as we thought we'd escaped having to have one, but it really helped Vic's skin color finally look normal & not so yellow. He also got more energy to walk more.
On Wednesday of week 2 Vic finally started feeling good & was talking & thinking normal again. He finally got his gut to work on his own so he could get rid of the catheter & bed pans, & he was able to get up & down with very little help. Vic was bored now that his mind is with it & he asked to go outside, but his doctor told him he'd freak people out & it was at too high of a risk for getting an infection from the air so he was stuck in his stuffy 80 degree room!
Vic had been telling me he had a cousin, Johnny, in the area, but his sisters were sure he'd moved away so when Johnny finally found out through the grape vine he came in to visit too. Through all of Vic's pain, he was so happy that him losing a finger was bringing together his extended family! That is my Victor... always looking for the positive in every situation.
I had, at this point missed 2 weeks of work & Vic had 2 weeks of unpaid leave so with Vic in good spirits & his hand seeming stable, I decided to go work for 2 days. My Aunt Pam & his cousin Tyler came down to keep him company while I was gone [no pictures :( ]. After I got off work Thursday night Vic was in full panic that the leeches weren't taking and the surgeon said we had to make a decision if we should do another emergency surgery to reattach the artery. If he did that then he'd have to cut through all of the new veins Vic just grew & we'd have to start leech therapy all over again. I couldn't make a decision and told the surgeon to do what he would do if it was his own finger. He said he didn't think it looked very hopeful so he'd just wait & see so he called off leech therapy. It was 11pm at night, the doctor had tried for 30 minutes to get a leech on, but Vic felt like I could get a leech on over the doctor so he asked me to come back down. At that point I was exhausted so I prayed that the nurse would be able to get it on as I was the one who trained her & she got one on! I had already packed & was ready to go back so it was a relief. The finger lasted past the one week point that the doctor said was so critical, but I felt like things weren't looking good so I started begging God for a miracle. I really felt that because I felt impressed to go through with all of this in the first place & because Vic has always been so faithful to God & caring of everyone around him that God would grant us this miracle, but first He was showing us just how much of a miracle it was.
That is why I was so strongly disappointed when Friday night the finger turned a very ugly, dark purple, and the leeches stopped being interested. Vic and I were okay with it & mourned our loss of it, but the nurse felt terrible so she paged the surgeon to to him our thoughts & shockingly he showed up at 10pm to check it out. He poked it & it was still bleeding so he declared it alive & that it was so ugly because the skin was shedding it's outer layer. He sat there with us until 11:15 at night reassuring us & coming up with a new game plan. it was SO nice of him! The surgeon was hopeful & said it still had a 50% chance of survival.
On Saturday night my mom brought our kids & they were quite freaked out by Vic's black finger & anxious to leave the room. They were too busy looking at Vic's hand to be excited to see their Daddy! Tommy kept staring at it & saying "yuck" over and over, but we asked him to hug Daddy & he nicely did, but quickly wanted to go back to Grandma. Whitney came in really excited and happy to give him a hug, but when she saw the hand she humped back & was ready to go. All the way down the hall she kept talking about not getting near Daddy's hand! Tucker came in for his turn and didn't notice a thing. He was so glad to see Daddy & the other kids were jealous so they warmed up him after awhile. Tommy couldn't figure out why Vic had been there so long & the finger was still not "all better"!
Sunday we visited, played, games, watched movies, and got excited to get released the next day. I was so excited that God granted us a miracle. Life was feeling good & I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Monday I took the kids to the zoo and when the surgeon came in to check Vic's finger it had dried up, was black & shriveled, & didn't bleed so after over 2 weeks of pain, leeches, bleeding Vic out, & hospitalization... the finger died. The surgeon didn't have time to amputate so they scheduled it the next day.
Tuesday Vic's surgery got pushed back because of an emergency surgery ahead of him. The surgery went well as could be hoped, but the doctor was worried that his thumb was not healing as well s he had hoped so he dismissed us, telling us that we needed to come back in 4 weeks to see what tissue implant and/or skin grafts will be needed to get the thumb back to working. (Also, Vic can't use his left hand at all so the thumb can heal.) By the time Vic got done with surgery it was getting late so we rushed to check off all of the things Victor had to prove he could do before we got released. We got home to Idaho really late that night and for the first time since we bought the home (41 days later) we got to sleep in it! It was nice to be home, but distressing to see all of the work & unpacking I needed to do : /
Wednesday I finally got to see the thumb & it was quite gross. The surgeon had described it as hamburger meat, but I thought it looked more like a giant crater/ulcer. I am usually strong with blood & gore, but I struggled to touch it as Vic was cringing & I hate to hurt him! Thursday, Vic got his first shower in 3 weeks!
The first week home is a black hole in my memory. I remember Vic taking lots of cat naps & trying every day to un-bury each room so we could find our clothes. Luckily Vic's workers brought us a few meals & I went to my mom's often so we at least had some good food!
After a full week both Vic & I woke up with alert minds & Vic started being helpful around the house, worked on getting the sprinklers going, & even one handed sawed some branches off our trees out back. I started painting a little bit every other day, but it'll definitely be a long road trying to get our house to it's normal state!
After 3 1/2 weeks Vic got cleared to go back to work for light duty. He had to wear a splint for 4 full weeks so he couldn't move his good fingers, his wrist, or arm. We started working to get them moving and slowly every day he gets a little more movement out of them.
Today we drove down to Salt Lake again for a 4 week check to see if we have to do tissue & skin grafts, but the surgeon said it is all looking very good & we won't have to do further surgeries.... YAY! Now we just have to hurry up & decide if he wants to get prosthetic fingers before July 1st when our insurance's new year starts over.... sure wish we had until December 31st like 90% of Americans do!
Now, for all of you that have been dying to see pictures keep scrolling down!!!
PLEASE STOP HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE VERY GRAPHIC DISGUSTING PICTURES!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment