Navy Portsmouth Part II

It was a little odd how I was perceived by the Medical Corpsmen I worked closest with. They viewed me a bit deferentially because I was an actual sailor who had been on an actual ship and had done actual sailor-stuff. Most of these guys had yet to see their first ship, so they were a little leery of what they did not understand. Naturally, I did nothing to disabuse them of this obsequious behavior.

Meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I certainly wasn't enamored with the concept of a stiff, pokey finger, so I was looking forward to therapy as odd as that sounds.

But first the pin had to come out, a schedule of those various therapies had to be set and some new, peripheral problems had to be addressed. 'Peripheral' in this instance meant the fallout from having my hand hanging from that stainless steel finger trap. That rather significant pressure had created bad scabs in interesting patterns over my finger. They had all resolved except one really huge, thick one about the size of a dime that covered the pad of the last joint of my index finger. 

I was going to post an example photo of that scab, but they were all so disgusting that it was too scary even for me. Instead, I'll just show you a picture of a kitten to take your mind off what's about to happen. 

So, the doc says, "Here, let me take a look at it." And in just that fraction of a second, he reached in and pulled that humongous, thick, discolored monstrosity off. !!! Looking back, I know what he was doing and I know it was the right thing to do, but I felt so betrayed. And it hurt like... like... uh... ... heck?

Aren't you glad I showed you that kitten? The scab that formed on that secondary wound was much lighter and came off on it's own volition. However, the first scab had taken my fingerprint with it, now there was just smooth skin. And since a few (!) years have passed, a little of the fingerprint has come back around the edges, but the middle is just a void. 

And then it was time to remove the pin from my second metacarpal. The doc did a small incision to expose the head of the pin and at least this time he told me to 'hold on'. He grabbed the head of the pin with pliers and jerked it out, thankfully in one motion. And you know those vinyl cushions that go on the examination room tables? The ones that are covered by paper to keep your sweat from offending the next person? Well, I tore the paper for sure and I don't know if the vinyl was torn before, but it was certainly torn when I was done.

There were three kinds of therapies on my schedule. One of them was to improve my range of motion. So this big, brutal therapist would grab my hand and try to force the fingers to move in directions they didn't want to go. Everything was stiff because there was just a mass of scar tissue but I could tell most of the fingers were going to move. Not so with the index finger and it was the source of significant, non-trivial pain.

Another therapy was deep massage. This was intended to break up and/or loosen up the scar tissue to allow more movement inside the hand. They showed me how to do it, but sessions with the massage therapist seemed a tad rougher than anything I did. Go figure.

The third was paraffin wax therapy. This action consisted of dipping my hand repeatedly into melted paraffin thereby building up layers of hot wax. This heat would serve to loosen up the scar tissue. 

Apparently, this is still a viable therapy in wide use. There are lots of these little bathtubs for sale around the Internet but at the time I had never heard of such a thing.

I even found a video that is a close approximation of what I did in my sessions.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9SSBD_ffjI  

Then, Doctor Davis introduced an alternate plan that he thought might serve me well. He suggested that since my index finger wasn't going to move again, it was time to remove it.