Family, Personal Journey Series, Success, Treatment
Jennifer’s Story (Simple Complete Syndactyly)
Brendan was born on 2/15/2013. He was our 4th child and he is our 3rd boy. He weighed 10 pounds 1 oz, and still wasn’t ready to say hello to the world. It was a tough induction and we are so glad he arrived when he did. He was perfect. They cleaned him up and took him away. My husband followed him to the nursery, came back to the regular room I was now in, and said he had some news. He said, “Brendan’s fingers are stuck together on both sides.” I was shocked. His middle and ring fingers were joined together. Neither of us or the nurses had noticed when he was born, since his hands were clenched together.
The doctor that came in had never seen it but had heard of it. He said it would be an easy process to separate later on and he relaxed our thoughts completely. He had thought it was hereditary. My husband and I both have large families and neither of us had seen this or heard about it. We asked both sides of our family and no one had heard of it.
We were referred to DuPont in Delaware. I believe we took him for a consultation at 6 weeks old. We met with a nice Doctor that went over the surgery process in full detail. She would separate one hand at a time and take the skin grafts from the groin area. We thought that sounded fine.
Months went on, and I did some research on Facebook and found a Syndactyl page set up. I was thrilled as all this information was coming in. I saw before, during and after, surgery pictures. I saw success stories from a pair of doctors from Shriner’s in Philadelphia. I had to go there. We got an appointment right away. We fell in love with the doctors. They were so much more knowledgeable and we loved their techniques.
Surgery was scheduled and rescheduled because of Brendan getting sick. We finally got in on 5/6/2014. He was 15 months old, but the size of a 2 year old.
Surgery went very well. The two doctors worked on each hand. The left hand had complete Syndactyl and the right was simple. The bones were not joined on either hand. We went home the same day. He had casts on for 4 weeks. That was painful for everyone.
Brendan did have an infection on one hand after the casts were removed but was quickly taken care of with an antibiotic.
His scars healed so quickly and there were not any notice of Brendan having problems using his fingers.
It’s been a year since surgery and you can hardly see the scars or notice that he had them separated. There is a slight turn to the ring finger on the complete fingers. The skin graft they took from the wrist is barely noticeable.
We owe Dr. Z at Dr. Cozen a huge thank you!! They did an amazing job!!
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