Broken Hand

The Saturday after Thanksgiving Dylan broke a bone in his hand.  His brother, Jake, had built a large skateboard ramp involving a small table (a ramp leading up to the top of the table).  Dylan went off the ramp on his bike, however the bike was longer than the table.  He came crashing off of the ramp and his hand hit the ground with the handlebar crashing into it.

The boys were afraid of getting in trouble, so they indicated that it was just a small crash on the ground.  Dylan came in with the knuckles of his hand scratched and bleeding a bit.  I washed them and bandaged them and didn’t think much more about it.  A couple of hours later he was still complaining of pain, so I started to evaluate his baby finger.  He couldn’t move it very well so when John got home from work we taped the last two fingers together.  The next day he still wore the tape, but didn’t complain a lot about the injury.  We were still thinking that this was probably just a jammed finger.

Monday morning he woke up and was complaining about his hand.  I looked it over and was surprised to see a large bruise on the inside of his palm.   I sent him to school and told him I would make an appointment for him as soon as I could and come and pick him up.

I picked him up and took him to an urgent care center to have the hand x-rayed.  It was indeed broken, but not the finger, the fifth metacarpal.  The bad news was that it was bent to nearly a 90 degree angle!  They put on a fiberglass splint and sent us to a orthopedic specialist.

We had to wait 2 days for that appointment.  We went to an orthopedic group and saw their hand specialist – Dr. Hahn.  He was great.  He said that in order to get the bone 100% straight you would have to do surgery and put in a pin, however that really wasn’t necessary with the this bone in the hand.  He felt he could straighten it to within 30 degrees of being straight and that he would have no pain and full-range of motion.  He also felt that over time the bone would remold itself.

The amazing thing was that Dylan opted to have the bone reset without any pain meds (as numbing it would require a shot).  He just toughed it out while the doctor reset the bone.  The doctor even gave him a free ticket to cuss and he turned him down (a very proud parent moment :).  He put a waterproof cast on and Dylan picked green.

When we left the appointment John and I were talking about how pleased the doctor seemed with his work when he was done putting on the cast, when Dylan interjected “I was just pleased when he was done!”  We got a good laugh out of this and really appreciated Dylan’s bravery!

When we came back for our follow-up appointment a week later, the doctor wasn’t happy that the hand had moved back somewhat to a 50 degree bend, so they cut the cast off, reset the bone again and recast it again.  This time Dylan picked red.  He was so brave!

He wore the cast for 1 month and had it removed 3 days after Christmas.  When the cast came off his bone was still bent to nearly 30 degrees, but just like the doctor predicted he had no pain and full range of motion.  His right hand doesn’t really have a knuckle on the last finger when you make a fist, but the doctor predicted that within a year the bone will have remolded itself to the point of not being able to tell which hand was broken.