Injury

Written Jul 10, 2023, tagged under post,thumb,injury,flute,orchestra,fracture,antibiotics

Did I mention I whacked my thumb the other week? What a nightmare!

A heavy bracket that holds a carpark gate rigid fell on my thumb while I was locking up. It hurt like the devil, I can tell you. I cleaned it up a bit and put a plaster on, and tried not to think about it too much.

Unfortunately, two days later it hadn't actually stopped bleeding, so I gave in and went to the local small injuries clinic at the hospital. After a four hour wait (who know how busy Wednesday mornings can be?), I was seen by a nurse who asked awkward questions like when had I last received a Tetanus jab (answer: about 1994) and would I mind being x-rayed (not at all).

A couple of hours later, and after having had a thorough soak in iodine, I'd been jabbed and put on a course of antibiotics, then bound up and put in a sling. It turns out the thumb crush had caused a fracture, and these kinds of injuries also carry a risk of getting a bone infection, which is said to be NOT A GOOD THING. This message was reinforced by the hospital appointment a couple of days later, where specialists took a look. Thankfully, they thought I could get away without a "deep clean" in the wound.

This seems to have proved the right diagnosis, as three weeks after the injury it's definitely improving. I might even get to keep the thumbnail, which I feared I would lose. It's still a bit numb, but doesn't seem in danger of bleeding any more and is hurting much less.

The most annoying thing is that it's thrown my exercise regime right out the window. Actually, arguably the absolute most annoying thing was having to pull out of my orchestra's concert - hard to play flute, when you need to balance the instrument on a fractured, painful and bandage-wrapped thumb! But the exercise thing is still a bummer.

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash