Pull my finger

I rode with a bunch of guys early today at a local trail, Pontiac Lake. My plan was to do two or three laps but early on a little mishap changed all that. I was riding my singlespeed which usually means you have to work a little harder to get up the bigger hills.

There is a particularly long hill known as two mile hill that can be tough to climb as it can be a loose surface and is fairly steep in spots as it winds its way up. The trail is also built along the side of the hill which means you need to be careful from going to close to the edge. I have never had a problem on this hill before.

Today while climbing it my foot pulled out of the pedal which caused me to jerk the wheel just enough to have it slide off the edge, causing me to slide out. I quickly popped back up and didn't think much of it other than I had reopened the scab from last weeks race. It didn't take too long to feel some pain in my left hand.

I noticed I couldn't really bend my left middle finger around the bar and in fact, the finger was pointing off in its own direction. The pain was more pronounced when trying to pull on the bars while climbing and if trying to use the front brake. Bigger bumps would also send pain shooting through the hand so I just slowed down some and pretty much used only the back brake. The mishap happened two miles into the 9.5 mile trail but I wanted to finish the ride instead of turning around.

When I got back to the parking lot and pulled off my glove I could see that something was definitely wrong. I called Sandy on the way home to let her know that she would probably need to take me to the urgent care. By now she is used to it and as long as I was breathing and moving it couldn't be too bad.

Once I finally got into the Dr's office they took some x-rays and then gave me the results, a severe dislocation. I was afraid of that because I know how these things get fixed. I was more worried about the cure than my present pain. The x-ray did look pretty cool though.

The nurse came in to give me a shot to numb me us some but gave it to me in the butt. I still can't figure that out but the doc said it was sort of a calming drug as well as a pain killer.

The doctor was a young female and as she started to work on my finger (read: pulling really hard) she kept apologizing for the pain she was causing. I kept telling her it wasn't her fault. She was having a hard time getting the finger to move so after awhile stopped to let me recuperate, probably her as well. Now my finger really hurt and I started to feel light headed.

She came back in a little while later and had me lie down while she gave my finger another go round. Her hand kept slipping slightly as she was pulling and I was afraid they were going to have to send me somewhere else that had somebody stronger to work on it. Finally the finger started to move around and I could feel a couple of pops as it worked its way back into place.

They took a few more x-rays to confirm that it was straight, they didn't want to move it too much more because they were afraid that it might slip back! They finger was splinted and taped to the finger next to it to keep it stable. By the time I left the finger felt 100% better. In fact, I hope to ride tomorrow, just not on a very rough surface. Hmm, that leaves out most of Detroit's roads.





Worse than it looks because I reopened an old scab.