"Can you feel this at all?"
It's been two months since an accident at his home's shop sent Danny Miglicco to the emergency room. "I was using a table saw pushing a board - basically splitting it down the middle - and the saw blade caught on the board such that it tilted it up and kind of threw my hand under the blade backwards."
In that moment, the saw split Danny's thumb right down the middle.
"I was really concerned about losing the whole thumb."
Danny's wife, who is a nurse, rushed him to the E.R. where Memorial surgeon Doctor Lawrence Weber was called in to act quickly - and he says this type of hand injury presents its own set of challenges. "It's a very intricate mechanism and the hand is really something where you will notice everything you do, every minute of the day."
After a procedure to clean Danny's finger and remove the damaged tissue, Doctor Weber recommended a skin grafting procedure that involved sewing Danny's thumb to his chest.
"It allows the skin of the chest, which is well vascularized, to grow into the skin around the thumb."
"It sounded like that was really the best option that the skin graft would be able to survive because of the blood supply it would have there," said Miglicco.
For three weeks, Danny's hand was sewn to his chest allowing for a transplant of tissue from the skin in his chest onto his thumb.
"It was pretty tough. It was odd, but I figured if it would give me a good thumb when I was done then it would be worth it."
"And how's everything feeling?"
Looking at Danny's thumb today, there's still some swelling that will go down over time, but its color and the fingernail growth show that the procedure was a success.
"I think the outcome is fantastic," added Dr. Weber.
And now with feeling and movement coming back to his finger, Danny's ready to get back to his active life with his wife and teenage kids.
