Bid to chop off injured finger
Megan Cullen, aged 22, from Bantry, Co Cork, spoke yesterday of her agony of living with chronic pain and of how she felt she had no option but to perform the DIY amputation in the hope it would bring some relief.
But she failed and was rushed to Cork University Hospital where emergency department doctors patched her up. Shocked by her plight, they wrote referral letters for her GP. Megan has since seen an orthopaedic specialist who is scheduling another operation on her finger. “But to be honest, I just want it taken off. Not the whole finger — just down to the second joint,” she said.
“I can understand how doctors are angry at me for trying this but I just don’t care about the finger anymore. To me, it’s a cadaver’s finger. It’s black and blue and in my head, it’s not mine any more. It’s just causing me constant pain.”
Megan, who spoke publicly about her plight on The Neil Prendeville Show on Cork’s Red FM yesterday, suffered the severe injury when she caught the finger in a car door four years ago.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner later, Megan said circumstances beyond her control prevented her from seeking medical attention.
She wrapped the finger in a bandage and took a range of painkillers before finally getting to a GP three months later. She was told the finger was crushed on impact and the delay in seeking medical help meant there was little could be done to straighten it. She was advised to allow up to a year for the finger to heal. But Megan said after two more visits to the GP over the next two years, where she was again told to allow time for it to heal, the pain worsened.
Throughout this time, Megan, who is a full-time carer to her mother, and who has a medical card, was prescribed a range of painkillers including Valium, which didn’t relieve the pain.
She was finally referred to a specialist in a city hospital who inserted a bar and wire last November to fuse the top joint. But Megan said when the bar was removed some weeks later, the pain escalated. She has received two 407 nerve blocking injections from a pain clinic, one which brought pain relief for just 30 minutes, the other which sent the finger into spasm.
She tried, without success, to follow up with the specialist, and was at breaking point a few weeks ago when she took an axe to it.
“I was in just so much pain and was just so frustrated, I said to myself that if I take it off myself, it will be done and dusted,” she said.
She ‘Googled’ the DIY amputation, sterilised her finger and the axe, iced her finger, applied a tourniquet, taped down her good fingers, and brought the axe down. But it struck the wire from November’s operation.
“I hit where the wire was and the axe rebounded. I just slit my finger open. I grabbed a tea towel and when my mother came in, she rang a taxi which brought us to CUH,” she said. “I explained to the doctors why I tried it. They didn’t approve but I think they understood.
“My friends just couldn’t believe it but when they see how the pain is affecting me, they are understanding now.” She also revealed how several weeks later, she tried but failed to cut off the finger’s blood supply. “This finger is just awful now. The pain has taken over my life.
“All of my time is taken up with it. I get only two to three hours sleep a night and then try to grab an hour a day, just to function. I am trying to stay off heavy medication but I’m a full-time carer for my mother, trying to do everything one-handed. I can’t even tie a lace.”
Megan said she is willing to wait up to two months for the next operation in the hope her nightmare will end.
