An ER Story and the Goat

When you are married to an ER doc, you hear a lot of interesting stories over the dinner table, but this was one of the most startling stories that I've heard in a while...

Excerpt of an email from Mike:
On Tuesday this week a seven year old boy presented to the Waikato Emergency Department with a chief complaint of infected finger wound.  

The young boy had injured the tip of his right third finger 3-4 weeks earlier.  Details are a bit sketchy, because no one exactly remembered how the injury occurred.  The boy kept talking about getting a sliver in his finger.  In typical Kiwi fashion, his parents thought-- "she'll be right", bandaged the finger with a simple plaster (bandaid) and thought no more about it.

The wound didn't heal.  The kid, being a typical, trusting 7-year-old, assumed wounds sometimes don't heal quickly and stopped complaining about the wound to his parents.  On the day before his presentation to our emergency department, his finger was aching something fierce and he thought he better investigate.  He took off the plaster which he had been changing regularly for the past 3 weeks and saw something sticking out of the wound that he was certain was the offending splinter.  He pulled it out, and decided to save it to show to his school class at "show-and-tell" the next day.  He reapplied a plaster and thought all would soon be well.

The next day he stood up proudly in front of his school class and produced the "big splinter" that he had pulled out of his finger.  His teacher became immediately concerned as she thought the "splinter" looked suspiciously like a "bone".  She requested that the boy show her his wound, and after removing the plaster she immediately called the boy's parents and an ambulance to come and take the boy to the hospital.  

The teacher's instincts were good. Initial x-rays in the ED revealed that the "splinter" the boy had pulled from his finger wound was actually the entire distal phalanx (finger bone) of that finger.  The bone and surrounding tendons/ligaments had become infected and somewhat rotten, making it possible for the boy to "pull it out" like a splinter.

The child was started on antibiotics, allowed to keep his "splinter" and will be followed up daily in the hospital wound clinic for the next two weeks to ensure his infected wound heals appropriately.  He'll have a shortened finger.  Social work and traveling nurses are on the case to ensure these follow-up appointments are kept.

Just one more example that "She'll Be Right, Mate" isn't a universal truth-- no matter what your Kiwi friends tell you.  

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Pictures from the last few weeks....last weeks of school...beginning of summer...

Ready for school

Watching the sheep shearing competition at the Stratford A&P Show, which was a lot like a country fair in USA,
but gumboots instead of cowboy boots, and no country music.  The fact that Oak happened to know 2 out of the 6 shearers that we happened to watch gives some insight into our community.

on the way to the "Goat" mountain race

Oak, Mike, and I all entered.  Oak finished 20K in just over 2 hours, finishing 4th out of 600 athletes.  I finished 570th!

what a course

end of the New Plymouth rogaine series - Joneses take the high family score

dance recitals

on the way to Ratapihipihi - one of the 5K loops from our house

Mercy and friends found Goat Rock in the Kaitakes.  Mercy is 'dux' of Yr. 9!

swimming after school

Oak on Tongariro camp

time for snowflakes

Books