This photo is a thumbnail, if you're not squeamish
click on the photo to see the aftermath of my surgery. |
This story isn't over yet. About
five days after I had cut myself, Shanna saw my
hand. The poke on my little finger had healed over, but the
finger was red and slightly swollen. She made an appointment
and I went to the doctor that
afternoon and started a regimen of antibiotic pills. Three
days later, instead of improvement, the red area was growing,
including the cut on my index finger. I decided it was time to
go to the emergency room, so off to Soldotna we went. We left
the hospital with a hypodermic needle stuck into a vein in my arm
and
instructions to give myself a balloon's worth of antibiotics
straight into my vein every 6 hours. 24 hours later Shanna was
cutting up the last quarter of bear and grinding it into burger as I
watched. I announced that when she was done, we needed to drive to
the biggest hospital we could find in Alaska, Providence in
Anchorage. My little finger was now swollen like a sausage
and very tender. In Anchorage, the emergency room Dr.
immediately diagnosed my problem as tenosynovitis (which is an infection in the tendon sheath).
She called an orthopedic surgeon who said he wouldn't touch it.
He said, "get a hand surgeon and if you can't find one, fly him to
Seattle." Nine hours later I was in surgery to clean the
infection out. This was followed by 2 1/2 months off work for
recovery and physical therapy. Not such a bad way to spend a
summer in Alaska. I quickly learned to fish one-handed and
beach red salmon without reeling. I later found out that my
experience with a cut while skinning a bear wasn't unique and heard
from other hunters who have had the same problem, some of them
without full recovery of the use of their finger; some people have
lost fingers. I was told that some people refer to this
ailment as "bear hand". |
