Lynzie's Story - Car Accident, Multiple Hand Fractures, Fast Recovery

Lynzie Dooley was driving home from work when another driver ran a stop sign and t-boned her. She didn't think anything was seriously wrong — until the ER found multiple breaks in her hand.In this patient testimonial, Lynzie and Dr. Jhade Woodall, hand surgeon at Summit Orthopaedics in Idaho Falls, share how they arrived at a treatment plan together.

Lynzie didn't want surgery at first. Dr. Woodall started her in a cast, and when the pain didn't ease, she changed her mind — a real example of shared decision-making, and the freedom to change course as things unfold.As the first person in her family to ever have surgery, Lynzie was nervous.

Dr. Woodall walked her through every step of the procedure so she felt prepared going in.One week after surgery she had roughly two-thirds of her normal range of motion and significantly less pain. At one month she was pain-free with healing fractures — recovering from three hand fractures in about a month, and back to work, writing, and her senior-year graduation activities.

Lynzie Dooley — Patient [0:00]
My name is Lynzie Dooley. I'm a senior at Skyline High School. I was in a car accident — I was driving home from work and the other driver ran through a stop sign going very, very fast and t-boned me. At first we didn't really think that anything was wrong, but after visiting the ER we found multiple breaks in my hand. We had heard of Dr. Woodall and heard that he was really good. So we came and consulted with him, and he came up with a really good plan.

Dr. Jhade Woodall, MD — Hand Surgeon, Summit Orthopaedics [0:24]
I'm Jhade Woodall. I'm a hand surgeon at Summit Orthopaedics. On X-ray, none of them looked terrible, and in general multiple metacarpal fractures is a pretty strong indication for surgery. I saw her, and initially she was very reticent to have surgery, which I think is understandable. I discussed with her that I leaned toward surgery and recommended it. However, at that time she felt pretty strongly that she didn't want surgery. So we actually started with a cast. I saw her a week later, and she honestly was pretty miserable — she was in a lot of pain — and I think that had somewhat changed her mind about surgery.

Lynzie Dooley [0:58]
It was kind of hard, because I was like, "Oh, I'm the first person in my family to ever have surgery. We don't really know what the outcome is. It could get worse or it could get better." We didn't really know what was going to happen, so I was kind of scared. But then Dr. Woodall really just calmed everything. He explained in detail what was going to happen, and I felt very prepared going into it. It was really scary at first, but he helped a lot.

Dr. Woodall [1:14]
I saw her a week later. She's got, I don't know, two-thirds normal range of motion. Pain's a lot better. One of her big concerns was getting back to work — she's a high school senior, and she didn't want to miss all of her graduation activities. One of the things that really pushed her toward surgery was pain with writing.

Dr. Woodall [1:31]
I saw her one more time at one month after surgery, and she basically was pain-free with healing fractures. She's an excellent example of shared decision-making with the patient — the ability to change your mind on the fly.

Dr. Woodall [1:43]
And then I was able to use a relatively good technique to get her early motion by balancing strength of repair versus stiffness, which is a big thing in hand surgery, and got her back to early function really quickly. She basically recovered from three hand fractures in around a month, which is really quite good.

Lynzie Dooley [2:02]
It's actually been really shocking how fast I've gotten back into doing everything. I'm so happy and surprised with my outcome and being able to use my hand again. I'm glad that I came and saw Dr. Woodall, and that they had the staff and the ability to be able to help me.

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