I don’t remember saying that before the basketball game, but that’s exactly what happened. (If you don’t know, I play on a church league team and coach the team.) In the first couple of minutes of the game, I wound up jamming the pinkie on my right hand while tying up an opponent on a rebound. It hurt, but felt like a jammed finger that you might get playing basketball. So, I played on. I continued to grab rebounds (sometimes gingerly) and block shots, and we won comfortably. There was swelling, but not too bad.
I was a bit concerned before I went to bed, but decided to sleep on it and see how it looked in the morning. There was still swelling, but the soreness was manageable. Still, I went in for an x-ray, and the picture to the right shows what the x-ray tech (and I saw) — a couple of clear breaks. (Click on the picture to view a larger version. If you didn’t know it, most pictures on this site work that way.)
So, it was on to a hand surgeon this afternoon, and his diagnosis was more significant — multiple fractures (more than the two obvious ones), with some really small pieces in some areas. Until he can do the surgery and figure out how to get things back in place (whether by pins, screws, or plates), he won’t even know if the finger will be immobilized or not. But it will almost definitely never work quite the same. He said he hadn’t seen this type of break be this bad in over a year.
Monday is surgery day, and then I’ll find out what comes next. In the meantime, my pinkie is splinted and taped to the ring finger, making typing this (as a touch typist) a bit challenging and taking longer than normal to type. And I guess basketball is out for a while. Just another of life’s little wrinkles, I guess.
Ouch. That really sucks.
Hope the surgery goes smoothly.