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Published: October 30th 2013
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Many of you have asked about Ava’s fingers. I am sorry that I didn’t give an update sooner. My Internet has been out for the last week and its delayed things a bit. Ava’s fingers are healing nicely so far. She cut them on a sign that it’s posted all over the university. She tried to pick the sign up and show it to me because she thought it was cute.
We have gone every other day to have it cleaned at the hospital on campus. There is one doctor who usually cleans her fingers. He obviously loves children. Ava runs to him when she sees him and he picks her up and hugs her. He’s a real sweetheart and takes good care of her.
Her fingers are still twice as big as they should be and she still can’t move her middle finger where her tendon was cut in half. I’m a bit worried about it, but she’s not supposed to move the middle finger for another 2-3 weeks so that the tendon can heal properly.
She got her stitches out today. The doctors at the campus hospital didn’t want her to hate them, so we had
to go back to the hospital that performed the surgery. Jia drove us again and helped with the translation and hospital procedures. Ava was pretty scared about having the stitches taken out. She started screaming and kicking the table. She told the nurse that she hated her. When the nurse, who didn’t speak English, was unaffected, Ava told her that she was breaking her heart. The nurse told Jia that all children are the same when it comes to having stitches removed. I think we were all glad when it was over.
I paid for Ava to have a smaller cast, which she will wear for the next 3 weeks and maybe longer. I’m really hoping that there are no lasting injuries and she is able to regain full motion of her finger with time and therapy. I do wish that her nightmares would stop. For a whole week she woke up 2-4 times each night screaming. She had nightmares that her fingers wouldn’t stop bleeding, that her hand had been completely cut off, and that I had died. It was pretty awful and I didn’t get much sleep the whole week. She only wakes up once or twice
each night now, but seems to be having more nightmares about talking trees than about her hand or my death.
The other problem that she is having is with her inability to do simple things for herself. At first, she enjoyed getting help with going to the bathroom and getting dressed. Now she's annoyed that she can't shower, put the toothpaste on the toothbrush, or put her socks on by herself. I've realized that she's basically useless with her left hand, which is interesting because she is still so young. She has been throwing a lot of temper tantrums and acting out. I will be glad when she regains use of her fingers and the cast is off, but I won't rush it because tendons are tricky things. I will be sure to keep everyone updated on how the physical therapy progresses. We should begin with that in 2-3 weeks.
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Tot: 0.354s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 54; dbt: 0.055s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
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Katie
non-member comment
Thanks for the update
Glad to hear that her fingers are healing nicely. Please keep us updated :) Miss you, Katie