Friday, October 17, 2008

Preston's Accident


Here is Preston being a cute Katamari snow person.

Sorry for not blogging for so long, but we've had rather a stressful time recently as Preston had quite a nasty accident. We were supposed to be having an exciting holiday at the mountain where Preston enjoyed his first snow experience, but it ended early after Preston lost the end of his finger in a door. It's all been very traumatic for us all (mostly Dan and I, as somehow P has dealt with it amazingly well), but we had some excellent public hospital service and surgery and I think we will be ok.

After the accident, we had an ambulance ride to Taumarunui Hospital, where they repackaged P's finger and piece of finger for a stressful drive to Middlemore Hospital for surgery. We were not even sure if surgery would be an option, but luckily the plastic surgery team at Middlemore were outstanding and decided it would be worth saving - and even managed to slot P into a quick midnight surgery before the more complicated dog-savagings and knife fight wounds were scheduled.

Preston's been a real trouper and has had his hand fully bandaged for about 10 days and has figured out how to do things with his left hand. We had the scary unwrapping on Wednesday where we would find out if the surgery had been successful. It was extremely disturbing for me, but P was unfazed and enjoyed helping the nurse with all the medical bits and pieces. It seems that the finger piece is attached perfectly and while it is still a horrible sight, the doctor was quite confident that it will 'take' and survive. At least it wasn't shrivelled up and dead - it looks like circulation is functioning so I'm very hopeful that all his extra vitamins etc i've been giving him for cellular growth and repair are doing their job.

Now we have a long process of having the dressings changed at the doctors every 2-3 days until it is properly healed.