Nothing about Zak's "simple" finger surgery has been "simple". Last week the surgeon took some x-rays to see how the bone was looking and we got a little wake-up call. The surgery itself was a success in that the bone fused to the correct place (despite the fact that the pin that was sticking out of the end of Zak's finger got caught on something and was pulled right out. Fortunately when he contacted the surgeon he said he was planning on taking it out just 3 days later UNFORTUNATELY Zak had been helping me put laundry away at the time the pin came out...can you imagine...he could have used that against me for the rest of our lives)!
Also, on the x-ray we saw some pretty convincing evidence of serious bone infection. In case you are wondering what it was we saw, exactly...when there is an infection in the bone, the infection essentially "eats" away at the bone. The severity of the infection really dictates how much of the bone remains as well as whether or not there is enough material left to stabilize the flesh, so to speak. In essence, we saw, where his bone should be (reflecting white on the x-ray) we saw mostly gray and black, meaning, there is not much bone left. The surgeon said that if this were a larger bone (rather than the end of his finger) they would go in and surgically scrape away the infection but in this case there would be nothing left. So really, at this point we are waiting and watching to see if Zak can keep the end of his finger. Zak does have a bit of a sense of humor about it, he joked that if they did have to remove it he would just miss the "S" key when he was typing...
Zak has had a picc line in place for awhile now, it was meant to stay in place for the remainder of his treatment (another 3 1/2 weeks or so) but he developed a pretty bad skin allergy to the adhesive on the surgical dressings that kept his picc line in place. So much so that they had to remove the picc line today, by order of the ER physician because they were concerned about the site becoming infected, I didn't know that was possible being that he's on the ninja of all antibiotics but I assume they know more than I do about the situation. So, he may have to have a shunt placed in his chest for the remainder of his treatment.
By the way, his finger looks TONS better. I will add a picture probably tomorrow.
