Sunday 21 December 2008

This weeks update on Tim

Tim had his first visit to the dressing clinic and hand therapist at the hospital on Tuesday. Everything is doing really well. The consultant is very happy with the skin graft and the way the scars are healing well. All of the dressings and bandages are now removed, though he has a stockinette bandage on at the moment to protect the scars from the splint he's wearing. When Tim was in the dressing clinic, wearing the sling, which I'd been shown how to fit on Tim's discharge last week, fastened by a safety pin. Evidently you can't use a safety pin anymore as it contravenes Health and Safety!!!!!! So now his sling has to be secured at the elbow with tape......
At the hand therapist I was able to see the X ray of Tim's hand before it was repaired. All I will say is that the surgeon must be good at jig saws, as the bones in the back of his hand were all over the place. Tim now has some more exercise to do, every hour and his splint has been adjusted to get his wrist at the right angle.
All in all everything is going well. I have taken photos of the graft and scars on his arm etc, but they are not for the faint hearted and we now know why the top of Tim's arm is very tender, there is one heck of a bruise starting to come out, as well as one on his fingers and on his palm.
Tim has been told that he could be in a splint for 3 months because the bones that go to his little finger are so delicate and were such a mess the consultant wants to be sure they are properly healed before removing the splint. It's going to be a very long haul........

1 comment:

Caroline M said...

I never stopped to think about why it was that the sling my son came home with was taped instead of pinned. It's not as if he could have caught himself on it through a plaster cast.

I'm glad to hear that everything is going well, we found that the exercise settled into a routine after a while (we had physio after an incident with a broken leg).