As some of you may recall, my 13yo son sliced the tip of his thumb off with a pocket knife about two and a half weeks ago and had to have it sewn back on in Emergency. It was a composite graft, and if you look up composite grafts of fingertips in people over the age of six, you'll see they're generally not recommended because of a high rate of failure. They usually don't take. There was some argument over what to do in the Emergency room because of this, and it was the head of plastic surgery who eventually made the call (via a phone consultation with the plastic surgery resident on duty that night). The plastic surgery folks removed the stitches last Tuesday, and a resident (a different one) was telling my son that the graft would probably fall off. But the doctor in charge was calling my son his "star patient" and seemed really excited and pleased. He scheduled my son for a bunch of tests that seemed to confuse the resident, who appeared to be of the opinion that there was no point. So, conflicting messages again. And, well, over the last few days my son's thumb was turning blacker and blacker and you could see it peeling up around the edges where the stitches had been. I was thinking, "Oh gosh, maybe it didn't take after all. Maybe we shouldn't have had him raking leaves yesterday... What were we thinking?" And then this morning my son came upstairs saying, "My nail fell off!" Looked his thumb, and I see beautiful healthy PINK nailbed! The ENTIRE graft took! He lost maybe a couple layers of skin and half his nail, but he's got a WHOLE thumb! *doing my happy dance* Hallelujah! My daughter said, "That really looks kind of gross," but I think it's the prettiest thumb I've ever seen.
Oh, how wonderful!!! That should mean he'll have little difficulty (eventually) with his instruments, right?
I've heard him playing guitar before bed every night, the last few days. :love: And he's already back to playing his saxophone (very carefully), much to his band teacher's disappointment. His band teacher really wanted to switch him to a bari sax with a stand, as there's only one bari sax in the entire band. But my son says baritone parts are boring and bari saxes never get to play anything fun, so he's VERY happy to have his alto sax back. I think the band teacher doesn't realize how lucky he is - when my son's happy, his music bounces and moves right along. But when he's mad, you can hear it in every note - I don't know how he does it. I just know that if they forced him to play, that'd be the most passive-aggressive, surly baritone sax you ever heard.
