Month 13: High-tech surgery

So, this month I underwent second surgery in pursuit to get default thumb length back.

After passing all the necessary tests (and finding out I have a minor heart beat extrasystole problem, which almost became the show stopper to the surgery), the day has come.
First, they found the nerves leading to all finger on my palm by sticking needles to a neural hub on my forearm. That was painful, and the finger in question jerked when they struck the correct nerve. After that, anesthesia was injected to these nerves, and I was put to sleep by some strong sedative intravenously. That is called nerve block anesthesia, and obviously it is much less toxic and overall taxing for your body than total anesthesia you are used to see in the movies.
While I was asleep, then sliced a little bit of bone from my flank-bone. That’s the arching bone you can feel through your jeans pocket. Then they attached this slice where I was missing a piece of bone on the tip of my thumb, and fixed it with a couple spokes. The is called self-transplant, and has almost zero chance of rejection.

Initially, they had plans to cut away a skin flap from the back side of my arm, but eventually they were able to stretch my skin long enough to cover the
now extended bone. That’s actually good, since the cut from where they took the bone for transplantation hurts like hell.

That’s basically it. I have to put the arm in a sling for a couple days, and the stitches on both the finger and the hip will be removed in two weeks. The spokes will be removed more than two months later.



The doctor said it is also extremely important not to smoke, since nicotine and tar clogs blood vessels, and they are very thin on the finger tip, so the self-transplant flap may die.
Thankfully, I gave up already.

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