Missing Fingertip

We will forever remember September 29th. That was the night Alexa lost one of her fingertips.

I had been on the phone talking with Steve who was on his way home from work. I was already in a stressed-out mood. Shopping hadn't gone well that day with the kids, what with them taking arm fulls of cheese and running around the store to doing flips over the bar in the checkout lane while I was trying to pay. Then they kept bickering and fighting with each other outside. As I'm complaining to Steve about this, they both tried to run into the bedroom where I was at the same time. Lately, they've been playing to age-old game of being the first person through the door and then slamming it behind themselves to block the other person from coming in.

Well, Alexa happened to have her hand in the hinge of the door, so when Jared ran in first and slammed the door behind him, it crushed her finger between the hinge and the door jam. She didn't even cry when it happened; her eyes just got really wide and she said a loud, "Ouch1" I though I saw a little bit of blood, so I threw a towel over her hand, but I still wasn't really worried. But when I pulled her in my lap, and pulled my hand away from the towel, it was saturated with blood. That's when I knew it was going to be bad.

When I pulled the towel away, all I saw was the bone sticking out of her left middle finger. The entire tip around the bone, down the the bottom of the cuticle was missing. That's when I screamed for Steve to get home right way. For some reason I just happened to glance at the door hinge at that moment and saw the fingertip stuck to the door. I raced to the kitchen for some ice and a baggie, put the fingertip on the ice (yes, it was very, very gross!) and tried to get both kids ready as fast as I could. Alexa still was not crying this entire time.

She is the bravest, toughest kid I've ever met. If this had happened to Jared, I'd be telling a whole other story. She was calm during the X-rays and even when I was explaining how they were going to reattach the fingertip and that it was going to hurt. She had to get eight shots in her hand, and she still didn't cry. She'd just say a loud "Ouch" after each shot. Then we tried to keep her from watching the doctor sew the tip back on, but she insisted on watching. It was only in the last ten minutes of the forty-five minutes procedure took that she broke down. I think it was a combination of it being 9:30 at night, she hadn't eaten anything since 1:00 and she usually asks to go to bed around 9:00. She asked to go home, and when we tried to explain that we couldn't until everything was done, she freaked out and we had to hold her down for the rest of the time. Sewing the nail back on was the most difficult part.

The tip did turn black, but we've been seeing a hand specialist every few weeks, and he assures us that her finger will eventually heal very well, and we'll hardly be able to tell that anything happened. We're praying for the best.