Dupuytren's ..? 17 3 11 (13) 25 1 21

Maybe a shorter blog today since I am having to type with mainly my left hand because the right hand little finger is all stitched up...

Take l took place 12 8 28 when two fingers were involved

tendon of right little finger seen here to be constricted but third finger also.

                                                   

Well I wrote a blog on the last occasion too but then it was on MySpace for a different audience and I cannot easily reference it today ...

4 1/2 years on many of the people in our nearest hospital for this kind of procedure were the same as then, down to the nurse receptionist H who met me first to take down the latest pertinent details. She had remembered me better than I her when I first visited to see whether the same hand surgeon J thought it worthwhile repeating the procedure. Now on Thursday last the 9th at 07 45 she took me directly to a small ward of 4 beds where the pre-med was to begin after I had wardrobed my clothes in exchange for hospital operating room gown and operation room stockings covering the whole leg to discourage any nasty blood clots during the operation.

Then I heard I was to be the second patient to be operated that morning and transferred to another ward around 8 30 where the rather longer procedure of putting the whole of my right arm out of action began by two new people: O, the principal nurse in attendance linking me up to the same water drip that accompanied me plus oxygen from a tube to my nose, and B an anaesthetist who had 50 ml of drugs to administer to my right upper arm targeting the nerves I understood associated with movement of my little finger. In this room was a third person, another nurse S who came over to chat though not to formally attend me when we each spoke Finnish which was neither her mother tongue nor mine, when we exchanged notes about bringing children up multilingually, a very interesting young lady telling about her seven year old son just learning English in school who already on holiday in Turkey had acted as a translator for Finnish and Swedish children who could only speak one of these two languages...

So the time passed when after dozing for part of the time the nurse O wheeled me away to the operating theatre around 12 15 where a new nurse T, like the Finnish writer of children's stories, took the reins as I was first transferred horizontally to the operating table, disallowed to stand owing to my blood pressure being variously 108/57 and even lower below 100/50 something, owing to all the anaesthesia mix, down from 147/75 then 130/75 before it was administered earlier in the morning. So O disappeared with my cot and T supplied a fresh sheet and on top of that a more insulating cover together with a hot-air blower beneath it to keep my body warm as the temperature in theatre would be maintained low throughout I was given to understand.

Then wearing spectacles with what appeared to be telescopic magnifying lenses embedded in each lens my surgeon J appeared and together with his assistant, the only person foregoing introducing herself, got on with the business at hand, with several tests having been made to ensure the anaesthesia was totally effective: douching both hands with maybe cooled alcohol or some such liquid which immediately felt freezing cold on my non anaesthetized hand but feeling nothing on the hand to be operated...

To my surprise J was far more talkative on this occasion and we got to discuss the music of the British singer Adele who he had singing as background to his surgical procedure, local politics in the town where I live, and the sad business of the increase of populism in the EU with the first Brexit, in UK, but with right wing groups in France and elsewhere apparently gaining ground…

And the result, too soon to say but I’ll leave you with one new pic of the latest procedure, unable to cross my fingers for its 100% success…hahaha but nevertheless full of hope...