Trigger Thumb Surgery for Toddlers Sucks- Motherhood Without Warning

Trigger Thumb Surgery for Toddlers Sucks!

One of the toughest parenting moments is dealing with a child in pain. A child preparing for a surgery she doesn't understand is as equally difficult.  My daughter Tula had Trigger Thumb in both of her thumbs. Trigger thumb refers to a thumb that clicks, catches or “locks” as the tip of the thumb moves from a bent to a straight position, according to childrenshospital.org. Not due to any injury, just something different about her tendons, cause her thumb to be 'locked'.  This was not a painful thing for her, she didn't know her thumbs should be any other way.  So opting for surgery was a tough choice.  But we figured if she ever wanted to play volleyball or tug-o-war, hitch-hike, give two thumbs up, or have her hand drawn turkeys neck be straight, we should allow her thumbs to have full use.  So we setup surgery.

We were told to just do both thumbs at the same time to "get it over with" and since we were having this procedure done in Denver, that sounded like a good plan.  I walked her back to the operating room and held her as the anesthesiologist put a mask over her face and she went limp like a wet noodle.  A nurse walked me out of that room and I felt like I was floating.  We waited one really long hour and then went to see her in recovery.  She woke up angry and screaming "get these off" "I want these off".  That was rough, the casts were bigger than we had anticipated and so heavy on her little 30 pound body.

A few hours later once we were home, I realized just how hard the 5 hour ordeal was.  I was operating out of my Warrior Mom mode, which is a blurry zone of survival that starts during pregnancy and labor.  We didn't really think about the fact that she would have each hand in a cast, which would prevent her from feeding herself and picking up her toys.  This has made for a trying 12 days, for us, she seems fine swinging those things around and getting hand fed.  The casts come off tomorrow.  They smell and she hasn't had a good bath in 2 weeks.  So yeah, I'm ready to have this behind us.  Thank goodness children are so resilient.

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My name is Kama and I'm a Mom...and that just freaks me out sometimes. I'm a bunch of other things that used to seem really important, but somehow being a Mom blurs those other things into mush. I have a 2-1/2 year old daughter and twin boys on the way. Everyday I have a "holy s**t, I can't believe I'm a Mom" moment and those get shared here.