And the Finger...

Way back on March 13, I took a tumble while running (photos of the sidewalk clutter that made me trip are here).  Initially, there was pain everywhere and some minor blood and and some major bruising (I went down while wearing my weight vest).  By the next day though, it was fairly clear that the only real issue, if any, was going to be my right index finger.

I'd been carrying an empty handheld water bottle when I fell, and while the plastic crushed a little, it also bent several of my fingers backward a bit, and the index finger the most severely. 

I thought about going to a doctor, but the fear of ending up heavily bandaged and missing my race made me abstain.

On Bella's advice, I decided to try taping it to immobilize it for a few days to see if that helped. 

Now it's been over two weeks, including several days of immobilization, and it still hurts and is a little swollen, so I decided to call my ortho. 

I completely trust him to treat me well and at the same time to recognize the fitness goals I have and help me find alternate ways to achieve them, even if the alternatives suck (for example, when we were worried I was getting the beginning of a stress fracture in my ankle, now known to have just been a weird bruise or strain from something at boot camp and fully resolved, he wanted me to run bleachers to keep up my fitness without that same straining motion; and bleachers suck; but I admit they suck because they're hard).  Even for just a finger injury, I figured he'd be able to ensure the treatment of it meant minimal disruption for my life. 

Anyway, now that I'm back in town, I finally called my ortho.  And learned that he doesn't do hands, and there is only one hand guy there on staff and he won't be seeing new patients until May.  The receptionist just confirmed what I suspected -- if I want to know for sure if it's broken, I can go to an urgent care place and get x-rays, but all they're likely going to do is put it in a splint to immobilize it and it will take about 6 weeks to heal.  Basically exactly what Bella had already told me to do. 

So more of the same.  It makes typing (and therefore working), considerably more difficult.  But it's still a very minor injury for what could have been a very major fall.  I'm surprised the resounding shockwaves from the fall didn't cause any foundational damage to the surrounding buildings.  Haha.  I went down hard.