There's nothing like a nice stroll on the beach to get the cobwebs out.
For some time now, Carol has been fighting an infection under two of her fingernails. After trying antibiotics, and having her soak them in Epsom salts with no results, our doctor finally sent us to a plastic surgeon in Corvallis. He told her that the only answer was to surgically remove the nails and then treat the infection with powerful antibiotic and anti-fungal medicine. Carol, shuddering at the thought, over the next few weeks kept trying soaking, and ointments but the infection kept coming back. Last week we drove to Corvallis and she went through the painful operation. On the way home she said the ten pain killer shots they gave her in each hand hurt like hell.
The doctor had instructed her to replace the dressings every day for the first three or four days and after that, every other day. The next morning when we started to remove the bandages, we realized that it wasn't going to be easy. She was still in quite a bit of pain and every time I would bump or tug too hard on the bandage she would let me know in no uncertain terms that it HURT! I tried cutting through the gauze with scissors and gained a little bit, but when we got to the nail beds we could see that the blood had seeped into the bandages and dried.
The doctor had said that we might have to soak them in water to soften the stuck gauze, so we filled a bowl with warm water and she began soaking. By now both of us were nervous wrecks. I was afraid of hurting her and she was in agony from every movement of the hanging bandages. I tried to cut some of the excess off, but the scissors slipped on a wrinkle and yanked part of the stuck gauze loose. Carol started crying and my hands were shaking so hard I couldn't do anything.
We decided to call Tony Mooney, our paramedic friend. He arrived in just a few minutes, and after seeing how much pain Carol was in, and how badly the bandages were stuck to her fingernail beds after an hour and a half of soaking, he dialed the clinic and got an emergency appointment to see doctor Vogelman.
They let Carol right in when we arrived, but even the doctor was stymied. They gave her another bowl of water and she soaked some more while they figured out what to do. Plan A was to give her pain killer shots in her fingers and then just pull the damn bandages off. Thankfully, while they were still planning, the soaking began to work and she was able to finally, slowly pull them free. She opened the door, stuck her hands out and gave them a “Ta Daaa!” They cleaned and re-bandaged her fingers and we went to the drug store for some Telfa no-stick gauze pads and some gauze finger tubing.
The next morning the old bandages came right off, and everything went fine until I tried to slip the gauze tubing over the Telfa pads. Carol remembered the nurse using a metal tube to layer the tubing up and down her fingers but didn't remember exactly how it worked. I found a short piece of plastic pipe about the right size in my workshop, but no matter how we tried we couldn't figure out how to use it. It was starting to get painful and Carol was close to tears again by the time I clumsily got a couple of layers of the tubing pulled on. I decided that the next time I'd do better.
In the morning when Carol said,”OK, Let's get this over with!” I began laying out the equipment. Scissors? Check! Telfa pads? Check! Gauze tubing? Check! Neosporin? Check! I cut pieces of adhesive tape and stuck them on the edge of a jar lid so they'd be easy to get. I unrolled lengths of gauze tubing, cut it, and split the end to make tie strips. Everything was ready, and I had a plan to get the tubing on...
My hands were shaking again, either from the Parkinson's or nerves, I'm not sure which, and things started to go wrong again. I got my finger taped to the Telfa pad and when I pulled it free, she yelped “Ouch!”
“Sorry,” I said while I commenced to tape the finger she was using to hold the pad in place to the other side. “Sorry,” I said again. Finally, we were ready for the tubing. My plan was to slide the first layer on, tie the end strips I'd cut around her wrist, roll it up like a stocking, twist it, and then roll it back down for another layer. It worked! The only problem was that her finger was now about the size of the fat end of a baseball bat! Apparently rolling the tubing stretched it way out of shape. We taped it down to a manageable size and called it good.
This morning things fell together. Carol figured out how to use the plastic pipe to put on the gauze tubing, my hands quit shaking so much and she didn't have to yell”Ouch!” once.
