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I began my adventure on April 3rd of this year. My sister had hauled her horse to a show that was in my town. The horse was a tense traveler and was anxious after being in the horse trailer for over 4 hours. I won't go into a lot of detail, but the horse went crazy in the trailer and I ended up having an amputation and degloving injury to my right thumb.

The pain, at first, wasn't terrible as I think I was a bit in shock at looking down and seeing the end of my thumb missing. It felt like I had just hit my thumb with a really big hammer. Since the end of thumb had been torn off, there wasn't a huge amount of blood either. I didn't bother to check in the trailer for the amputated part as I figured the end was shredded. As I was being loaded in the ambulance, a very kind man handed the paramedic the end of my thumb and it was completely intact (but not very clean considering he'd just found it in a horse trailer).

I was taken to the hospital, where, oddly enough, I work as a nurse on an orthopedic floor. Amputated fingers are nothing new to me, but it is quite different when it is your own. Because finger tips don't generally do well for reimplantation, none was attempted. Instead, I had a Moberg flap and skin graft done which essentially means they sliced the skin around the palm side of my thumb and slid it (complete with blood supply and nerves) to the end of my stump. The open area at the base of the thumb was filled in with a skin graft. Surgery took an hour and I was sent home.

I was off of work for 2 months as the end of the thumb was left open to heal in a more rounded manner. I had to wash my thumb daily in the shower and dress it at least once a day.

When I first saw my thumb after the injury, there was barely any nail left. I thought that is all I'd be left with. But apparently, the nail had ripped off the nail bed and the nail bed had fallen into the wound. Right now, the nail is grown out almost as far as it will get.

The end of the thumb is a little chunky and misshapen, so I might have surgery to correct that as soon as the swelling is gone. I have exercises to do daily because I have lost a lot of mobility and the skin graft wants to contract. I have adjusted fairly well and am extremely grateful that I didn't lose more of my thumb. My family has now calls me Stumpy and I carry around pictures of my thumb to show off like pictures of my children. I figure I'll grow out of this stage eventually as the scars fade.

Description of pictures

1.Splint: This is a pic of the splint that I lived with for 12 days. I was in this to prevent any movement of the hand so the grafts would take. I was a bit anxious when this was removed because I didn't know what the thumb looked like. My imagination would take over and pretty soon I was convinced it was rotting under all of that bandage. So it was with a mixture of relief and revulsion that I saw my hand for the first time after the bandage was removed.

2.Front of Thumb: This is the front to the thumb 12 days after the accident. I had just gotten the splint and bandages off the day before. This was quite a shock as much of the tip of the thumb is open. The nail bed is the orangey round looking thing and nail eventually grew back. The pic I sent to you first is also from 12 days post-op.

4.Hand and Thumb 04/23/2003: This pic is from 4-23-03. You can see how things are a little more cleaned up. If you look at the tip of the thumb, you can see a stitch. The doc removed all of the stitches except for the absorbable sutures, which I found out later that my body doesn't absorb. I started removing all of the sutures I could. The one visible took some digging to get out. I thought they'd absorb so I didn't try getting it out for several weeks. I removed my last stitch about the 3rd week of May. The end of it was hanging out the end of my thumb. When I pulled on the threads, I could see a knot moving down by my cuticle. I ended up incising the side of my thumb and cutting the stitch out.... OUCH! Took me an hour to do it. Once I finally got rid of that darn stitch, the end of my thumb finally healed up.

5.Straight On: This is from 4-23-03 also. The thumb is very swollen at this point. I really thought it might be infected. You are looking at the edge of the nailbed and what will eventually be the end of my thumb. At this point, I can't even imagine what my thumb is going to end up looking like.

6.Getting There: Pic from 4-30-03. It is healing but looks pretty ragged

7 & 8.Taking Shape: This if from 5-3-03. I am starting to get an idea of what it might look like.

9 & 10.Complete: These pics taken June 15. The nail is almost completely grown out. I haven't decided whether to have additional surgery.

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Editor's Notes:

Wow, What a story. A horse ripped off part of your finger. I can honestly say that's something I've never heard anyone say before. I guess you're lucky you didn't get hurt more seriously (although this is pretty serious). Horses can kill.

My scariest horse experience (one of my only horse experiences) was trying to split up a bunch of horses one night to separate one that had to be taken out. It was dark outside. There were three of us and two flashlights. We lined up in the field about 20 yards apart and walked toward the horses so that they'd run toward us and split into two groups to go through the two holes between the three of us. The middle person was me, but the flashlights were needed by the outside people. So there I was putting myself in the middle of a bunch of running horses in the dark. It worked out fine, but I was a little nervous about it, especially since they told me the horse that we were trying to get liked to kick.

I got lucky and nothing was ripped off. And thank goodness, cause those pictures are painful to look at. It looks like it's healing very well. Our first three wounds on the site were serious finger wounds (including an amputation) and I'm amazed at how well digits can heal. Actually, since starting this site I've been amazed to learn how well we heal in general, but fingers seem to come out looking pretty normal after a substantial amount of trauma.

This cowgirl gave a lot of description for each picture and that is always appreciated, hope you guys enjoy this one, it healed up great.

Sharky

Photos:
Splint- That looks comfy
Front of Thumb- 04/16/2003
Hand and Thumb- 04/16/2003
Hand and Thumb 2- 04/23/2003
Straight On- 4/23/2003, looking into the nailbed
Getting there- 4/30/2003
Taking Shape- 05/03/2003, looking good
Taking Shape 2- 05/03/2003
Complete- 06/15/2003, closed up and nail grown
Done, from side- 06/15/2003, That looks great