"Thumb Stuck"

(Please Excuse the Chocolate Chip Cookie Face and Chocolatey Sandy Hand)

So, I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, but am just now getting around to it. Several months ago I noticed that Julianne's thumb would get stuck or jammed and would just stay bent (see picture above). She would come to me and say "thumb stuck" while holding out her hand for me to see. I thought it was kind of crazy and wierd, but I could usually play with it until it would come unstuck. This was happening several times a day for about a month or so.

Well one morning while we were having a breakfast with some of our neighbors I happened to mention to the other moms there about her thumb. And low and behold, in she walks with her thumb stuck. Except this time I couldn't get it to straighten out. The other moms asked if I had taken her to the doctor about it. I hadn't even thought about it really. I figured they send me home and tell me she would outgrow it and it was nothing. But they got me thinking. So while my kids were playing with their kids, I made us an appointment and we ran over to the doctor's office to have it looked at.

We saw a PA there instead of our regular doctor, who was booked up. She had no idea what to do about it and thought it was really odd, so she goes to get our doctor to come in and he is just as stumped as she was. He said old people can get what's called "trigger finger", but that he had never seen anything like it in a kid. Neither one of them could get it back in place. Oh and did I mention Julianne was screaming like a wild banche the entire time and the we were having to communicate by shouting the entire time. Then they start throwing out words like hand surgeon, orthopedic doctor, x-rays. What? Wait a minute! I thought you were supposed to pop it back and send me home, reassured it was nothing to worry about. Nope. Not the case. We had to go over and get it x-rayed and it seems that all the bones are fine, which means it's a joint/ligament problem and we have to be seen by a pediatric hand surgeon up at Primary Children's Hospital. Crazy, huh! Julianne's thumb has been stuck since we came back from Yosemite almost a month ago. The surgeon apparently only comes into the office twice a month, so it has been impossible to get an appointment. We have ours close to Pioneer Day, so we'll see what happens. All I know is that he better stay away from Julianne's ears and just look at her thumb, otherwise this will be a very useless, and loud appointment.