Coastal Orthopedics hand expert helps victim recover from horrific pit bull attack

It was a normal Easter Sunday in Florida.

Tami Padgett was enjoying an afternoon at home by the pool, reading a book and enjoying the weather. Then everything changed.

As a favor for a relative, she was taking care of three foster pit bulls. For six days, Tami and her 18-year-old twin daughters had taken care of the dogs and gone about their daily routines.

“In the last two and a half years, I’ve fostered 96 puppies, but I didn’t have a lot of experience with pit bulls,” Tami said.

On Easter, Tami asked her daughters to take the dogs out of a bedroom one by one so they could feed them. The girls brought one dog out, fed him and then took him back to the bedroom. But when they brought the second dog out, something changed. The dog snapped.

“He pinned my daughter against the wall and bit off pieces of her chin,” Tami said.

Tami ran inside and tried desperately to get the dog away from her daughter. It latched onto Tami’s left arm and hand, then let go and bit her other daughter. Finally, Tami was able to drag the dog out the door as her daughters called 911.

“When EMS got to our house, they said it looked like a homicide scene,” she said.

There was blood everywhere, and the top of Tami’s arm was missing down to the bone. Her muscles and ligaments were gone, and she had wounds on her right hand, too.

At the hospital, a plastic surgeon put 78 temporary staples in Tami’s arm to hold it together and told her she needed a hand surgeon.

Her daughter had 30 stitches to sew the flap back over the piece of her chin that her older sister had found on the living room floor. Tami’s other daughter had to get 20 staples.

When Coastal Orthopedics’ hand and wrist specialist Dr. Melissa Boyette came into Tami’s room at the hospital, she looked at her arm and wasn’t sure if she would ever have a functional hand again. Dr. Boyette was hoping to get at least 50% of the function back in the hand but the injury and recovery was very unpredictable. She had torn tendons going to her wrist and four fingers. Tami’s hand therapist following the surgery described the procedure as a “Hail Mary tendon transfer.”

The surgery to reconstruct Tami’s arm lasted numerous hours.

“I thank God every day that Dr. Boyette walked into my hospital room,” Tami said. “The kindness, compassion and caring she showed along with her whole staff – it made the most horrible, traumatic experience of my life tolerable.”

After Tami was released from the hospital, Dr. Boyette and a hand therapist helped her regain the use of her arm and hand.

“The original prognosis wasn’t good, but from Dr. Boyette to the physical therapist to me, it’s been an awesome group effort,” Tami said.

For two weeks she couldn’t use either hand, so her 18-year-old daughter bathed her, fed her and cleaned up the aftermath of the attack.

When her hard cast came off after about eight weeks, she started physical therapy. In all, she went to 35 sessions, doing simple hand movements for hours that most people take for granted every day. She even practiced writing with her right hand using Sesame Street ABC books just in case she wouldn’t be able to use her left hand again.

She and her daughters went to counseling, and the pit bull that attacked them was put down.

And while Tami recuperated, friends brought puppies to her house to visit her, which she said was great therapy. A couple months after Easter, she started fostering puppies again, but she said she will never take care of an adult pit bull after what she and her daughters went through.

In addition to the initial surgery, Tami had three reconstructive surgeries to rebuild her arm that Dr. Boyette helped facilitate quickly because Tami and her family were moving to Tennessee.

“She knew I was moving, so just a week and a half later, I was going underneath the knife,” Tami said. “Not only was Dr. Boyette concerned about functionality but about appearance. She went beyond what she had to do.”

Today, Tami still gets flashbacks and has a hard time getting to sleep. Sometimes she has nightmares.

“In a way, I’m glad to be moving,” Tami said. “It will be good to get out of this house. It’s a constant reminder.”

With 90 percent function in her arm and hand, Tami will just see Dr. Boyette as needed.

“If I ever had a problem, I would only see Dr. Boyette,” Tami said. “I would make the 650-mile drive to see her. I can’t say enough good things about her. She took her time with me,and not only did she help me physically, but she talked to me. I never felt like a number or like I was being rushed out the door. It was a phenomenal experience during the worst time of my life.”