Emma's Thumb And Brad's Door Hinge

Disclaimer: The following post is NOT for the squeamish, faint of heart, or little children...injury images ahead. (You have been warned.)
On Oct. 23 a little while after school, Bradley accidentally closed Emma's thumb in the Hinge Side of his door. It smashed her thumb pretty tight and did some big damage to her nail. Poor Emma was so brave and poor Bradley felt so bad. Just Awful. Right before we drove her to the doctor Brad was in tears and Emma just says, "Oh, Bradley, don't worry, it will be okay." We took her up to her pediatricians office and this picture sums up all Emma was feeling. She was so brave but in some pretty bad pain. Here she is soaking her wound to clean it. Dr. Jorgensen was on duty for the evening appointments and she did a great job. She discovered after soaking and cleaning it that her nail base had come completely out of her nail bed. Protocol for this would have been to give her several shots in the thumb and then to stitch down the nail into the bed again. There was not much left to stitch the nail down to and it was still attached at the tip. So, She pressed it back into place as best she could, wrapped the dead tissue around it and steri stripped it all in place. The main thing was to get connection reestablished for a new nail base to grow. We did not get a picture of it on the first day, but day 6 and 7 were bad enough (see below.)

She had to go back twice (every other day) for redressing and to check for infection. She was also put on an oral antibiotic to fight infection.

Day 6 She was turned over to us for her wound care and we clean and redress it every day. She will eventually loose that nail, but we need it to have contact with the bed for a week to establish a new base. If not she will not regrow a nail and just have a stubby thumb. Even at that we won't know if her nail has regrown for about a month.

Pre-cleaning day 6... Post-cleaning day 6...

Day 7 on 10/29 Looking less swollen but quite a ways to go and again eventually that whole nail will fall out.PS... Big thanks to our neighbor and friends the Fitzgeralds for all their help the day it happened.