Originally Posted by clavus

A thumb seems like trivial information when we are about to have elections and there is lots of real news, but in my little sphere, the thumb is a big deal. I saw the hand surgeon today—a wonderfully attentive man—who said that after two or three weeks more of IV antibiotics he will operate on the thumb. It will actually be two surgeries. He will cut a big rectangle of tissue off the index finger and while the end of the rectangle is still attached to the finger, he will sew the portion of the index finger onto the thumb, then he will encase the two fingers together for two or three weeks. The theory being that while the tissue gets a blood supply from the index finger, the flap will graft onto the thumb. Then when the graft looks healthy, it will be separated from the finger. Very clever. It doesn’t sound fun, but much more encouraging than the meat cleaver idea. Even though it sounds painful and time consuming, I think a thumb is a pretty important thing to save.