Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

The Christmas Thumb

A 1981 Christmas time story worth re-telling in February has to do with an Alabama man, his dog who likes air-conditioning, his thumb, his big toe, and two teams of Birmingham doctors.

“SURGEONS REPLACE THUMB WITH TOE,” read the headline. Then the lead paragraphs gave details:

“BIRMINGHAM (AP) -- A Birmingham man was granted a rather unusual Christmas wish this week when doctors gave him a new right thumb.

“Doctors at University Hospital worked eight hours transplanting the big toe on James Nix’s right foot to his right hand. Nix said the family dog bit off his thumb in June.”

“I tell people I got a new thumb for Christmas,” Mr. Nix joked on Christmas Eve, after his surgeons, Dr. Richard Meyer, and Dr. John Gould, had said that the transplant appeared to be a success.

The jubilant Mr. Nix, a 41 year old heating and air-conditioning repairman, was happy that he was going to be able to return to work. He recalled that his run-in with the dog, a chow, occurred on June 13, a very hot day. He said he hit his dog when it refused to come out of the air-conditioned house. He then fed and watered the dog and forgot about the incident.

But the dog didn’t forget. Three hours later when Mr. Nix was sitting on a swing the dog approached.

“All I did was call his name and he leaped for me ... I found out a chow holds a grudge.”

The teams of doctors who did this first operation of its kind in Alabama said that the transplant should leave Mr. Nix with a right hand that looks almost normal and works almost normally and that he should be able to walk just fine without the toe.

One group of doctors, led by Dr. Gould, removed the toe from the foot. The other group, working with Dr. Meyer, prepared the hand for the transplant and then attached the new thumb.

“Most of the work,” the writer of the article concluded, “was done under a microscope, since the doctors were attaching nerves, blood vessels and other tiny, essential parts of the appendage to the hand.”

What would you say is the lesson in this story?

“Never hit a dog on a hot day!”

Well, yes. What else?

“Modern doctoring can do most anything!”

True. Present day surgeons are very skillful. But what else?

“Maybe Saint Peter put a star in the crown of Galileo and all those other old fellows who had a part in inventing the microscope?”

Probably so. But there’s something else. See how you like this answer:

If you have two good hands and normal feet, clap your hands for joy! And dance a jig! Then use all four for good. For work! The man who will not work is nothing. He is also miserable.

Printed February 1982. Click your browser’s ‘Back’ button to return.