At the end of February I got my cast off from surgery on my right ring finger. It felt great to have my hand back again, to be able to type and grip things with my right hand. Easier to run. I was surprised that pulling the pins was pretty much painless. The PA just grabbed them with pliers and slid them right out.
I had to go to rehab for two days a week for 8 weeks, which actually helped a lot. There really is a specialty in hand therapy, even for a skeptic like me. I still don't have 100% use of the finger, maybe 90%. I can't bend the tip all the way down, and occasionally my grip isn't there because I don't have the same sense of touch. But otherwise it's back to normal.
I had the surgery on my finger at a surgery center by the Chinese Cultural Center. I naively thought it would be like getting your wisdom teeth out, but it was a full-on affair in an operating room naked under a gown, totally out under anesthesia. That was not a pleasant feeling, being wheeled into the OR, getting on the table, so vulnerable. But I made it without any side-effects or too much pain. Bobbins was a good wife taking care of me.
I got back into softball. The dads from the girls' school got a team together for a City of Phx "D" rec league. We won our first two games and had a lot of fun. The second game of the second week I was pitching. Bobbins will tell you I shouldn't have been there at all. We had our pastor over for dinner and I left to go play. Mind you, she had forgot about the dinner, so Father showed up unexpectedly, and I had already committed to playing....
At any rate, near the game's end, a batter hit a hard liner right at me, and I instinctively put my hands in front of me stop it. The ball ended up hitting my non-glove hand and smashing my ring finger. I picked up the ball and threw the guy out. I tried to bat that inning but could barely grip the bat. I took myself out and iced it, then went home after we lost. The next day at work everyone said it looked bad and convinced me to go to urgent care, where an x-ray confirmed a fracture. Just to make sure, they referred me to a specialist. I didn't want to go but ended up going because it was my right hand.
Sure enough, it was actually 2 fractures (the urgent care doc missed one), the second on the joint. The specialist gave me the dire news in a worst case scenario and said surgery was a must.
Me with the splint from urgent care, and shots of the finger:
X-rays showing the damage:
In mid-October. He tried to crawl into our bed in the middle of the night and fell out at some point, hurting his right shoulder. Hopefully it wasn't a break. He seems to have healed up ok.
