I went to the doctor for a check up. I have four more weeks before these bad boys come out. It’s weird having to look at this every once in a while to clean my hand.

About two weeks ago I was playing basketball with the Elder’s quorum. One of the guys threw a pass towards the rim on a fast break. I went up to lay it in, and it glanced off the tip of my finger on my left hand and went out of bounds. It hurt my finger pretty bad, and I thought I jammed it. Two games later I decided I better call it quits and go home to rest. Over the next few days the swelling began to look more normal (at first it was only on the inside of the middle knuckle) and the pain was going down so I thought it would be okay. This picture was taken a week after I hurt it.

About a week went by, and I could not bend my finger at all. It was really bruised, so I thought I better go get it checked out. X-rays showed a piece of the bone on the middle knuckle had broken off and was poking towards my middle finger. (This is what probably caused the weird swelling right away) Since the bone was right on a joint, pins would need to be put into the finger to help put the bone back in place. They told me I would need a splint on it until then. I was expecting one that would just cover my finger, however the nurse practically made me a cast. I thought it was a little ridiculous, and extremely annoying.

My surgery was scheduled for two days later. They put me to sleep and gave me an anesthetic block in my arm, which made it so I couldn’t feel anything from the elbow down for 15 to 24 hours. That was the craziest feeling. The doctor said surgery went well because they were able to use pins to realign the bones without cutting my finger open. This will allow for a quicker recovery. I have to go back in about a week so they can take the pins out, and then I will have to have physical therapy so my finger can bend again. Here is my post-surgery finger.

It is annoying because there are simple things I can’t do with one hurt finger. Brittany ties my shoes, scoops ice cream for me, butters toast for me, and many other things (it took about 45 minutes to type this blog entry). I can’t drive because I’m taking Percocet for the pain. And worst of all, I can’t play basketball for at least 2 months.