They operate on your right little finger 4 times:
1. The first to reattach a ligament to a bone, sewing a button on the outside of your finger and running sutures through the ligament, through the bone, through the skin to your Seahawk colored button on the outside of your finger.
A different doctor decides to remove your sutures 3 weeks early. Ligament only partially attaches to the bone.
Ligament begins to shrink. Little finger begins to tilt outward, eventually achieving a 30 degree angle from perpendicular on your writing hand. Any time you use a pen it feels like someone is unjamming an icepick into that part of your hand.
First knuckle on the finger is destroyed as a result.
2. See original surgeon. Freak him out because I request finger be amputated. Promises corrective surgery within 60 days. (This was on October what... 24th of 2014 or so)
Meanwhile, VA implements the utterly worthless "Veteran's Choice."
Except they don't tell you. And as a consequence, they take your name off the VA surgical schedule.
You wait 50 days but don't hear anything. Meanwhile, finger gets worse... hand starting to look like it belongs to ET and is becoming practically useless.
"Veteran's Choice" refuses to do anything because they claim they can't get my records. Takes them two months to get the records. I already have a referral for hand surgery, but once "VC" reviews the records, they start sending me authorizations.
They send me authorizations... 3 of them for a primary care doctor (Which I do not need) and THEN, once I get them to figure out what I DO need (hand surgery), they send me 3 authorizations for carpel tunnel surgery, which I DON'T need.
THEN, when I finally get them to understand that I need a hand surgeon, they refer me to one, who, (not their fault, obviously) just happened to get diagnosed with two different stage 4 cancers.
So, I contact the VA and ask them if I'm still on the schedule. (They had to put me back on it outside the 30 day window to game the system to get me on Veteran's Choice, again.)
They told me I was, for another 7 weeks... appropriately enough, April 15.
I tell them the hell with it: I've had enough of screwing around with VC and just keep me on the schedule so they can do it.
VC was unhappy with me, but tough shit.
3. We are now 5.5 months after seeing the surgeon who referred me.
He removes destroyed knuckle, wires "Middle phalanx" to "proximal phalanx" and pins everything together using titanium pins (Bone, apparently, won't grow around titanium.)
Things go along OK for two weeks or so, then one of the pins fell out of my finger.
(Meanwhile, I still can't use my hand for anything.)
Spend 8 hours in VA emergency room. Doctor says there's nothing he can do for me (He's an ER Doc, not a hand doc) and sets me up for two weeks exam.
MEANWHILE,the wire used to wire me together starts trying to come out of the skin at one of the suture sites.
Doctor finally sees me, tells me that where the wire is coming out is, in reality, a cyst. Schedules me for a month later to have cyst removed. Tells me I no longer need pin, removes the other pin.
It becomes clear it's wire, and not a cyst. I try to tell them it's wire because I can push it back in.
They don't believe me. Tell me it's a cyst.
Go to have cyst removed... doctor cuts out something, looks in and says, "I'll be damned. There's that wire."
I told him I'd tried to tell them... he says, well, I guess we'll take it out...
He sends somebody out and, I swear to God, they come back with a regular pair of needle nose wire cutters and a pair of what looks like Ace Hardware pliers.
This guy goes to work on my finger, pulling wire out and cutting it... sounds like when I rewired the dash on my 69 camaro.
Finally tells me, "OK, we got it all out."
4. Except, of course, he didn't.
And when he cut the last piece out that he DID remove, he left a needly type point on the wire still in my finger.
Which also tries to come out after about 3 weeks.
I go back in, show the doctors where the wire is literally poking through the skin from the inside, and they schedule me for my 4th surgery to get the remaining wire out.
Which they finally do... some 3 years after this all started and some low 6 figure cost to the taxpayers, and around a $1000 cost to me for all of it.
A little too long to fit on the bingo card, though.
Finger will never bend, but at least it's straight, if covered with scar tissue.
1. The first to reattach a ligament to a bone, sewing a button on the outside of your finger and running sutures through the ligament, through the bone, through the skin to your Seahawk colored button on the outside of your finger.
A different doctor decides to remove your sutures 3 weeks early. Ligament only partially attaches to the bone.
Ligament begins to shrink. Little finger begins to tilt outward, eventually achieving a 30 degree angle from perpendicular on your writing hand. Any time you use a pen it feels like someone is unjamming an icepick into that part of your hand.
First knuckle on the finger is destroyed as a result.
2. See original surgeon. Freak him out because I request finger be amputated. Promises corrective surgery within 60 days. (This was on October what... 24th of 2014 or so)
Meanwhile, VA implements the utterly worthless "Veteran's Choice."
Except they don't tell you. And as a consequence, they take your name off the VA surgical schedule.
You wait 50 days but don't hear anything. Meanwhile, finger gets worse... hand starting to look like it belongs to ET and is becoming practically useless.
"Veteran's Choice" refuses to do anything because they claim they can't get my records. Takes them two months to get the records. I already have a referral for hand surgery, but once "VC" reviews the records, they start sending me authorizations.
They send me authorizations... 3 of them for a primary care doctor (Which I do not need) and THEN, once I get them to figure out what I DO need (hand surgery), they send me 3 authorizations for carpel tunnel surgery, which I DON'T need.
THEN, when I finally get them to understand that I need a hand surgeon, they refer me to one, who, (not their fault, obviously) just happened to get diagnosed with two different stage 4 cancers.
So, I contact the VA and ask them if I'm still on the schedule. (They had to put me back on it outside the 30 day window to game the system to get me on Veteran's Choice, again.)
They told me I was, for another 7 weeks... appropriately enough, April 15.
I tell them the hell with it: I've had enough of screwing around with VC and just keep me on the schedule so they can do it.
VC was unhappy with me, but tough shit.
3. We are now 5.5 months after seeing the surgeon who referred me.
He removes destroyed knuckle, wires "Middle phalanx" to "proximal phalanx" and pins everything together using titanium pins (Bone, apparently, won't grow around titanium.)
Things go along OK for two weeks or so, then one of the pins fell out of my finger.
(Meanwhile, I still can't use my hand for anything.)
Spend 8 hours in VA emergency room. Doctor says there's nothing he can do for me (He's an ER Doc, not a hand doc) and sets me up for two weeks exam.
MEANWHILE,the wire used to wire me together starts trying to come out of the skin at one of the suture sites.
Doctor finally sees me, tells me that where the wire is coming out is, in reality, a cyst. Schedules me for a month later to have cyst removed. Tells me I no longer need pin, removes the other pin.
It becomes clear it's wire, and not a cyst. I try to tell them it's wire because I can push it back in.
They don't believe me. Tell me it's a cyst.
Go to have cyst removed... doctor cuts out something, looks in and says, "I'll be damned. There's that wire."
I told him I'd tried to tell them... he says, well, I guess we'll take it out...
He sends somebody out and, I swear to God, they come back with a regular pair of needle nose wire cutters and a pair of what looks like Ace Hardware pliers.
This guy goes to work on my finger, pulling wire out and cutting it... sounds like when I rewired the dash on my 69 camaro.
Finally tells me, "OK, we got it all out."
4. Except, of course, he didn't.
And when he cut the last piece out that he DID remove, he left a needly type point on the wire still in my finger.
Which also tries to come out after about 3 weeks.I go back in, show the doctors where the wire is literally poking through the skin from the inside, and they schedule me for my 4th surgery to get the remaining wire out.
Which they finally do... some 3 years after this all started and some low 6 figure cost to the taxpayers, and around a $1000 cost to me for all of it.
A little too long to fit on the bingo card, though.
Finger will never bend, but at least it's straight, if covered with scar tissue.
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