WHEN Jarrod Ryan watched a piece of machinery slice through his right palm leaving three of his fingers hanging by just a flap of skin, he thought ‘that’s not right’.
“It was pretty wet and rainy and cold and it just slipped,” he said.
“I just pushed it all together and got a guy from work to drive me up to the hospital.”
The severity of his injury meant shock kept him from feeling much pain until he had almost reached Bendigo Health.
“Then it started to hurt a fair bit,” he said.
Mr Ryan remembers briefly seeing plastic surgeon Broughton Snell’s face just before he was knocked out for the 11 hour operation to reattach his digits.
Four surgeries and almost two months after that night, Mr Ryan is starting to regain function in his hand thanks to the work of about 50 health workers including Mr Snell, operating theatre staff, emergency department workers and hand therapists.
The smashed knuckles at the base of Mr Ryan’s hand were unsalvageable but the surgical team was able to fuse the joints together to reattach his fingers and rejoin his arteries and tendons.
The intricate microsurgery was the first of its kind in Bendigo.
Prior to Mr Snell’s return to his hometown in January 2014, patients needing such procedures would be transferred to Melbourne for treatment, costing crucial time in cases where every minute matters.
“We had to get onto it quickly. None of the fingers had a blood supply and tissue dies off if it’s not being nourished,” Mr Snell said.
He said being able to remain in Bendigo for the entire duration of his treatment aided Mr Ryan’s recovery profoundly.
“Having the same surgeons and therapists and doctors and nurses treating you from the time an incident occurs right through to the end, gives you a continuity of care rather than being handed around from people in Melbourne to Bendigo,” he said.
“In that handover information can be lost and it doesn’t lend itself to streamlined care.”
The new Bendigo hospital would bolster the already strong facilities, he said.
“It’s going to be a seriously capable hospital. Most of the specialities are going to be represented. A lot of people who have got illnesses that were previously treated in Melbourne will be able to be treated in Bendigo,” he said.
Mr Snell spends most nights of the week at Bendigo Health or St John of God, piecing patients back together or helping to restore their looks.
“My average week is a mixed bag of head and neck reconstructions, facial trauma, hand trauma, breast reconstruction, skin cancer surgery, a little bit of cosmetic surgery,” he said.
The diversity of practice was what drew him to plastic surgery as a speciality.
“It’s about restoration of form and function. We work out what the deformity or disability is and then we work out what can be done to restore it,” he said.
Mr Snell said Mr Ryan’s recovery was progressing well.
“The whole aim of this type of surgery is to restore as much function as possible to the hand,” he said.
“I don’t think he’s will ever have full strength in it again but it will be a good non-dominant hand. Hand surgery is never about appearance; it’s about whether you can pick tools up or play an instrument or shake someone’s hand.”
In Mr Ryan’s case, he is focused on being able to continue ballroom dancing with his partner, a sport he took up not long before his accident.
Getting there will take time. He has at least three months of hand therapy ahead of him and will probably require another surgery to free up his tendons from the scar tissue which is forming in his healing fingers.
Mr Ryan said as far as he was concerned, with a full complement of fingers on each hand, he couldn’t be happier with the outcome.
“They’re all still there, that’s the main thing,” he said.
