Tuesday morning I was out jogging with our puppy, Geordie. About ¼ mile from home I’d just jumped a drainage channel and looked down to make sure that Geordie’d made it across OK when a stupid rock – with no regard for its own wellbeing – failed to get out of the way of my right boot.
The upshot was me face-down in the rocks and dirt with a bruised chin, right cheekbone, and right pectoral muscle, and what turned out to be a broken, dislocated, and lacerated right thumb. (I was trying to think of a fourth thumb injury I could have included in the mayhem, but with the short time-frame nothing sprang to mind.)
I spent the lion’s share of the rest of the day in the emergency room, and tomorrow I visit the hand surgeon. With school starting in about 3 weeks, I need to get this done lickety-split.
I saw the surgeon today and he said that the bone is so shattered that if he opens me up, it’ll fall apart. So he’ll manipulate the pieces into place from the outside, then insert pins percutaneously (through the skin). That’ll be tomorrow.
The surgery went incredibly well yesterday: 20 minutes from soup to nuts. They yanked my thumb back to its proper length, put in two longitudinal pins (more like sewing needles, I’m told), and 2 or 3 lateral pins at the base of the thumb to hold the bits in place. I’m in a cast from mid-forearm to the base of my fingers (and covering my whole thumb). I go in for a follow-up x-ray on Monday. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t be happier.
