“Nooooow, this’ a little story I got to tell …”
I normally play 3rd base in 12” softball. I also live around Chicago. I’m not just telling you that for nothing. This year, one of my buddies asked me to also play 3rd on his 16” team. We’re talking Chicago softball with the enormous balls (no giggling), shortened base paths, and no gloves. Half way into the season - October 2nd to be exact - it’s the 1st inning of a game (meaning, the ball is still hard) and a guy slams a grounder in my direction. I field it normally, feel a pop in my left thumb, throw to first base, look down, and have a Salvador Dali moment; yeah, it was extremely surreal.
I didn’t panic, I just told the guys I needed to go, walked off the field, and grabbed my bag. They thought I might have dislocated it (a typical injury), buuuuuuuut I didn’t and I did NOT want to show anyone. Finally, somebody smart asked me if I was okay to drive, which kind of made me think, “No. No I’m not. My thumb isn’t attached anymore”.
That’s right. I severed it. I broke the bone right in half at the top knuckle and nearly tore the whole top portion of that digit right off. Only some skin on the bottom of my finger kept it from rolling right off of my hand and onto the floor. One lonely Beastie it did almost be. Now you should be able to fully grasp the surreality I was in. No pain, though. Probably caused by the abundance of numbness.
Needless to say, called an ambulance. Paramedics were ticked because they didn’t understand the severity of the severance either. They too thought I had just dislocated it.
Side note: It’s actually really hard to describe this injury. If you’re ever in this situation, take a picture. I did and it’s the only thing that connects the dots for people. No, I will NOT post the picture.
Got the hospital; Loyola Medical, luckily. But not without some delay on the paramedics part. They just sat us there at the field in the ambulance for like 20 minutes. I passively aggressively mentioned to them several times that my thumb was no longer connected to myself like it used to be. But no, I was not in pain and therefore, paperwork first. I should also say that people in the ER certainly take their time when they think you only have a dislocated thumb.
While in the ER, an x-ray machine operator came by with her roaming x-ray machine to take some … x-rays. Like everyone else, she did not get the nature of the injury. She asked me to do some crazy stuff with my hand, including turning it over so the back side of my hand could rest on the machine because “[she had] to get the x-ray”. Well excuse me! My thumb needed to stay attached, lady! Needless to say, we didn’t like each other much. Me the nuisance, her the torturer. It was a little bit like a showdown at the OK corral.
I eyed her. She eyed me. I flinched. Damn!
After several other curious nurses and aids came by - who all acted like they were supposed to be doing something for me, but really just wanted to complete the mental model they had put together in their head - somebody finally paid attention. I was told by the ER supervisor person that Chicago-based medical students have to specifically learn how to treat 16” softball injuries because they are so common and so different from any other sport (the injuries, not the students). This was actually extremely fascinating to myself and my wife. I was also told that no one had ever severed their thumb during the act of performing recreational softball. Awesome!
Fortunately for me, the really laid back resident and his intern did such an awesome job lining the joint back up (which happened to be broken in two places) and sewing everything back together that I have never needed surgery. I was subsequently told this process was called a reduction, to which the dictionary concurs:
The act of remedying a dislocation or fracture by returning the affected part of the body to its original [host]
Felt more like a relief to me.
Side note: I had to receive a local anesthetic in my hand - apparently called a digital block, which made me giggle to no end. Well, when your thumb is not attached, the unattached portion does not receive this so-called numbing nectar. So, when they finally start sewing your thumb on, you can … uhhhh … feel everything. Okay, enough.
After 3 months of healing and “therapy”, I now (as of today) have 4/7’ths the range of motion in my knuckle that I once did. That’s 40 degrees of movement at the left knuckle compared to 70 degrees in my perfectly fine right knuckle. This is of course assuming the two knuckles were at one point equals. For whatever reasons, I did not do a baseline measurement before I severed the thumb. The doc says “six months is the point at which you’ll see no more healing”.
Speaking of healing, I actually took pictures once a week (or there abouts) to capture a timeline of the healing process. I will likely post these as an update in the near future here.
Update
Surprise! I lied. I’m not going to post the pictures here. I posted them to my Flickr account, but you have to be my friend to see them. If you’re not my friend, then you know why … don’t you?!
