Crooked Pinky
So I was looking at my pinky yesterday, and was reminded of the oh-so-fun time I broke it while playing football in gym class in 7th grade.
Yeah, I was THAT cool. LAME.
See, they had an actual rule requiring girls to participate in a certain number of plays during the football game during each class.
Sexism? Apparently so.
The other team was kicking off the ball, and I decided to step up and try and catch it.
Bad idea.
I had my hands poised in the air, ready to catch the ball.
The ball impaled itself onto the edge of my left hand and then reflectively bounced to the ground.
I quickly realized that the football hitting my hand created a burning pain that burned with the fire of a thousand suns.
I drew my left arm up and just flung my hand in pain, yelling "OW!" at the top of my lungs.
I hadn't even looked at my finger yet. I just knew it HURT.
Then I looked down at my finger and OH. THAT'S NOT RIGHT.
UH-OH.
(I tried to find a picture of what my pinky kind of looked like, but I did not stumble across anything that did the break justice, so I'll show you this *random not-mine* picture to give you an idea...
Okay, now imagine that being the pinky on my left hand, and the top half of my pinky pointing to THE LEFT (how did that even happen...the left???) and the pinky being EVEN MORE CROOKED THAN THAT. I wasn't kidding when I said it was a gnarly break....)
So I stayed completely calm and was just like "Aw crap. I broke my finger."
So I go over to the substitute teacher and I hold up my hand and I'm like "Um, can I go to the clinic?"
And the substitute flips out.
She was freaking out more than I was...
"Oh my god! Let me get someone to walk you there in case you go into shock or something..."
WHOA, take a chill pill lady.
The girl that walked me to the clinic was freaking out as much as the substitute.
I was totally calm.
The nurse and I were on a first name basis (which happens when you have to go to the clinic to take medicine twice a day...) so when I came in she was like "What brings you here?"
And I showed her my hand, and she was like "OH."
So she made this totally rad plywood makeshift splint for my hand, and when she called my Mom, she was like "Yeah, I think she broke and/or dislocated her finger."
Broken AND/OR dislocated? Aw crap.
So Mom picks me up and we go to the Naval Hospital (Note: Mistake Number 1: Naval Hospital)
It's the end of the afternoon, and it's busy as anything in the ER.
There's no justice whatsoever, so of course, the adults with a mild case of the sniffles get seen before me.
We sat around waiting for hours and hours.
My hand was swollen to the size of a small country.
I was so bored from waiting, that I actually started to try and bend my pinky.
I was like "Hey, maybe it's not broken after all."HAHA fat chance.
FINALLY, I get called in to see a doctor.
And do you know what they told me?
"The people in the cast room have gone home for the day. We can't do anything for your finger today. COME BACK TOMORROW."
Those bastards.
The people in the cast room would have still been there if I had been seen hours earlier when I had arrived at the ER.
BUT NOOOOOOOOO..........
So I got to go home and sleep it off with the crooked-pinky-from-hell which hurt like a mofo.
Do you know how hard it was to try and sleep without injuring my hand further?
Not fun.
So we went back the next day.
Got x-rays of my hand.
They told me that not only was my pinky broken, but the bone had rotated as well.
Well isn't that just spiffy?
So they need to numb up my hand so they can set the bone (put it back in place)
Had I mentioned how swollen my hand was?
They're trying to inject a syringe full of numbing LIQUID into my hand which OH! just so happened to be fucking SWOLLEN AND FILLED WITH LIQUID ALREADY!
The feeling of that numbing injection: I wanted to KILL the person doing the injection.
MAINLINING TO KILL. MURDER. STRANGLE WITH MY BARE (broken) HANDS. MAKE THEM SUFFER.
I've had surgeries that were less painful than that injection.
OH MY GOD. PAIN.
So now that my hand is numb, they get to set the bone. This was kind of weird.
They basically grabbed the top part of my pinky, and pulled outward (Exactly like pull-my-finger, just to give you a visual to work with) and they just started turning it.
Pull. Spin. Move. Pull. Spin. Move.
Finally they get the bone in it's proper place.
Then they tell me that because it's such a nasty break, I'm getting a lovely short arm cast.
I'm not even lucky enough to end up with just a finger splint. But a whole damn cast.
A lame cast too. Plaster.
Because of the way the finger was broken, putting the plaster cast on was like brain surgery for these peeps. It had to be done just right.
I had gauze put between my pinky and ring fingers. Those were cast together, and the rest of my fingers were free.
I thought I would be good to go. I had my cast on. It had been a few days. Feeling a little better. Then.....
The plaster between where my pinky and ring finger were cast together and the rest of the cast...it decided to CRACK.
Which meant I was able to make the cast move and wiggle my pinky and ring finger.
UH-OH.
So we go back to the Naval Hospital (Note: Mistake Number 2: Naval Hospital)
You'd think they would put an entirely new cast on...right?
But since putting the original cast on had been such brain surgery for them (Gnarly break, remember?) they said "Oh, just make a fiberglass cast over top of the plaster cast..."
FUCKING MORONS.
So my ugly plaster cast got covered up with pink fiberglass.
As if my cast hadn't been heavy enough...
So I finish up my time in the cast.
Go back to the doctor to get it sawwed off.
They take the thing off and MY PINKY IS CROOKED.
No joke.
The bones had shifted when the plaster cast cracked, and when they covered it in fiberglass, they pretty much said "Here bones! Heal out of place!"
So they were like, "Um, let's make a little pinky cast for you and we'll try and force the bone to bend back into place..."
HA! Like that was really going to work.
But I got this really weird cast put on just my pinky (How retarded did that look? LOL.)
(You learn quickly how to tie shoes, hold drinks, and cut food with this retarded finger sticking out all by itself. Still to this day, my left pinky just naturally separates itself from the other four fingers on that hand. I still can't cut up food properly because of the way I hold my utensils...who knew that having a cast for a few weeks could cause such lasting retardedness of my fingers?)
Kept it on for the duration, and when it was taken off, finger didn't look much different.
So even my pinky that I didn't break is kind of crooked, but the one on my left hand...it's just retarded looking.
Side by side comparison: Left pinky is definitely retarded.