Not a Great Friday for Brad.....

Wow...Brad had a Craptacular Friday! While talking with co-workers, right before leaving work, his thumb was crushed by the side sliding door on his work van. *YOWZA*

I was at a Birthday/Going away party for a family that is moving back to LA this Tuesday. While I was getting ready to leave, I noticed that I had 4 "missed calls" and 2 "messages" on my phone. I checked the missed calls and saw that Brad had called, so before checking messages, I called him back. He has horrible reception so all I really caught of the conversation was...."thumb", "roller", "X-ray" "nail gone", and then..."Oh, I'll call you back". I of course start freaking out and called Tib. I decided to check my messages and got more of the story....(ok, starting to feel slightly better, but still worried)

Brad finally calls me back (realistically, it was like 5 minutes later, but it seemed like 30), and he gives me some of the details. Apparently while shutting the sliding door with his left hand, he reached for the passenger door with his right hand. While looking at a co-worker, he missed the handle on the passenger door and WHAM...the slider caught his thumb! (Now totally speculating here, but I think I would be screaming every cuss word I could think of at this point.) He started shaking and was scared to look down at his thumb. When he finally did, his findings were NOT pretty.

His thumb nail from the middle of nail bed to tip of finger was flipped up in a 90 degree angle, and the portion of the nail that goes Under the cuticle was sitting on Top of the finger. Basically envision a V and that's what his nail looked like. He said there was lots of bleeding and it was running down to his elbow and dripping off like crazy. That's when he actually looked at the "thumb" portion. The pressure of the slamming of the door cut/blew his thumb open. The best way I can describe it is that he thought he might lose the top 1/2" of this thumb.

So after checking out the "damage", Brad jumped in his friend/co-workers (Dennis) van and off they went to the Hospital. They arrive at the local Kaiser to find that the hospital has apparently MOVED! At this point Brad is starting to freak, and from what I've heard, go into Shock. He tells Dennis to find another hospital NOW! They get to the ER and they give Brad some ice and ask if it's attached still. (I guess several people came into the ER that day with severed fingers/appendages. *UGH* (we keep looking at his injury as the better of the two outcomes). Brad tells them yes, but not by much.

So to make this long story a little shorter, they bring him back, have him wash it (oh, I didn't mention that his hands were covered in dirt/grease/grime from rebuilding a pump, as well as the paint that was used to paint the pump), they X-rayed it, shot it up with stuff to numb it, and then had to clip off the end (tip portion) of the nail. After that they put stitches in to reattach the part that had been severed. They gave him some Vicodin and sent him on his way. He has to go back in 2 weeks to have the stitches removed.

Today we had to change the dressings, and let's just say it was SO YUCKY! Totally something out of a Horror movie or Freak show. Just NOT RIGHT! I have pics that Brad took at the hospital with his cell phone, but don't want to make anybody ill, so here's a B&W of it after we took the dressings off of it today.

**WARNING still pretty NASTY/GRAPHIC**