Not Broken... This Time

An x-ray below shows the results from when it was broken before, But let's start at the beginning.

It was truly stupid, and I assure you I felt every bit of the stupidity, only overshadowed by the pain. Yesterday we were returning from grocery shopping, and I'd just put the last load in the wheeled cart which climbs stairs to haul it inside. The hand in question was on the handle, keeping it next to the car since the cart will roll on the slightest incline.  Because it takes my other shoulder extra force to bring the hatch down and return to a more comfortable position (thank you arthritis) over the force of the hydraulics, I'd given it an extra hard tug to bring it down. I thought the other hand was out of the way.

It wasn't.

Wham! Right across the back where the palm was gripping the handle, thus trapped at its elevation and not getting knocked out of the way. (Insert your version of resulting language here.) The hatch bounced up a bit, and had to be pulled back down once the rest of me was out of the way.

Steve made me an ice pack, which I left on for about half an hour. After that the hand was fairly numb, but doing a good job of puffing up and changing colors. We spent the rest of the day occasionally looking at it in a kind of "Isn't that interesting" kind of way. At bedtime it was aching and doing its fair share of keeping me awake, but sleep finally triumphed.

When I woke it was even puffier, with distinct sculpted shapes marking bruise topography across the back. I chose not to touch it, heading instead to my laptop to answer some emails. The very process of striking the keys set up a lingering ache, which of course demanded delicate exploration by the other hand. There was one tallest bump which felt like something hard was resting close under the surface. I tried to ignore it but the persistent ache demanded otherwise. After consulting by phone with the nurse at my local clinic, an x-ray was deemed a good idea. Yes, they had one. No, there was no room in the schedule, try the ER.

Three hours later I was home bearing a copy of my x-ray. Yes, per the title, it was not broken this time, so I also had hematoma care instructions. And yes, per what you hear occasionally on TV shows, old broken bones do show in x-rays years later.

The thumb rises on the right, and I'm told the scramble of bone below it and the index finger, which raised the ER doc's eyebrows over a botched job, is the previous break. That fits with where I hurt most, which was when I had  to write something, like signing for freight on the job, bringing thumb and forefinger together and moving them. I am, as you should have guessed by that, a leftie.

I do not have an x-ray from that injury. I was without insurance at the time and chose to deal with immobilizing my hand myself. I reassured today's ER doc that it was not one of his fellows to blame, and explained how it had all happened. I had tripped and landed in a three point landing, both hands and one knee. One hand/wrist hurt at the time. I rigged up a form with flat pieces of wood like tongue depressors in a "t", duct tape to hold their shape, and a folded old sock to provide shape to keep the hand formed in. Then an ace bandage kept it in place inside my hand. I could pretend it was a sprain. I switched to a slightly different configuration for sleeping, and after a couple weeks, for work switched to a carpal tunnel brace, as they'd just appeared on the OTC market. Driving all day was a challenge, but mostly successful without those twinges of warning.

A bit over 6 weeks later there was no longer pain, and nobody was the wiser aside from family. I had been concerned that I'd be forced to stop working until it healed, but since nobody knew, I just pushed my way through it. When an independent contractor, one does what is necessary to keep the income flowing.

And when a blogger, one uses whatever stories one has.