John and I had quite a day.  It started with a text message around 7 a.m. from Matt saying that Sam had dropped a weight on his hand and Sara, Matt, and Sam were heading to Bemidji (that meant ER room).  My first thought was "Another grandson with a broken hand".  Our grandson, Jesse, who lives in CA, broke his hand a few weeks ago by tripping over his dog while playing basketball.  He ended up having surgery and a couple of screws inserted in his hand.

We just got started walking when Matt called back and told us the bad news.  Sam had almost completely severed the  tip of his ring finger and crushed the middle finger.  He asked us to call the ER at the hospital to let them know of his injury and that they were on their way in.  We got another call updating us on the situation and learned they had Sam started on an IV and were giving him pain meds.  They were waiting for the orthopedic doc to get out of surgery to look at the fingers and decide how they would proceed.  There were several options, one of which was amputation of the first digits.

Matt and Sara had rushed out of the house and forgot a few things, so they asked us to go to their place, let the dog out and grab Sara's purse along with her appointment book so she could call and cancel the salon appointments she had for today.  When we reached the hospital, Sam was settled in a room waiting to go into surgery. We stayed until the nurses came to get him, and while Sara elected to stay, we took Matt out for lunch and grabbed something to bring back for her.  

Sam was still in surgery when we returned to the hospital, but it wasn't long before the doctor came out to talk to us.  The surgery went extremely well.  The surgeon was able to reattach the one fingertip and nail and managed to remold the crushed finger tip and save that nail. Sam's greatest fear was avoided--no amputation.  Sam will be on an antibiotic for the next seven days to hopefully prevent infection.  His fingers are individually wrapped in what they call a cocoon bandage which is then attached to his wrist.  This stays in place until he sees the doctor in one week and at that time the dressings will be changed.  Sam should be well healed in six to eight weeks--until then he has to be very careful of those fingers.

Sam was taking a while to get awake, so John and I grabbed his prescription and dropped it off at Wal Mart so Matt only had to pick it up and not wait around for it to be filled.  We then picked up some fresh fruit and eggs and headed home.  It was a long day, but thankfully all turned out well.