What the Hand Surgeon Said
Yesterday, for the first time ever, I visited a hand surgeon. My left pinky (or fifth digit, in hand-surgeon parlance) has not been the same ever since it got whacked by a volleyball on a mild August night nearly two months ago. I had been playing with some people at the net that's always up near the World Financial Center, right on the Hudson River. Wednesday nights from May to October there is a Battery Parks Conservancy employee there with a clipboard and a volleyball to organize things and referee the games, and that's when people like me, who love to play but are not necessarily of the very highest skill level, tend to play. (Other nights, I hear, belong to the serious, scary players.)
On this particular night, I continued playing long after I was too tired. It's always hard to leave, even as it's getting dark, because it's just so much fun and so much of a release and a break from regular life. And it's beautiful there, right by the river. So, it was getting dark, and I went for a ball someone else already had called, crashed into her and the ball at the same time, and felt the tip of my finger kind of go boing as it popped backwards out of place. I immediately staggered off the court, held up my finger, and started crying. Most of the people there took one look at it and averted their faces, but one brave woman volunteered to pull it back into place. "Do you want me to do it?" she said. I said yes. She said, "Just pull it straight?" I shrugged and said, "I guess so."
And she did it. Amazingly, I felt it snap back into place. She even helped me make a little splint out a pen that I had in my bag and a small plastic bag. (When I told this story to my "other" volleyball friends, whom I play with on Sundays in the park near where I live, one of the guys said knowingly, "Oh, she did the full McGyver on you.") I took a cab back to Brooklyn with the intention of going to the emergency room, but gave up that idea after I poked my head in and realized I'd have to wait for two hours. Instead, I stopped at Rite-Aid on the way home and bought a very attractive and shiny little blue splint. I saw my doctor two days later; she sent me for an x-ray which came up negative for fracture. She left me a message with the results of the x-ray, noting that if the finger didn't seem to be getting better I could or should go to the hand surgeon, because maybe it could be something with the tendons.
I didn't take the doctor's advice right away--I thought, airily, hand surgeon, that sounds like overkill, what's this about tendons, seems a little farfetched.
But after two months, the finger is still swollen, won't bend all the way, and, worst of all, is crooked. No, worst of all is that I've had to be very cautious about playing volleyball. I've played a couple of times, with the finger taped up to the finger next to it, but I kind of knew I shouldn't really be playing.
So yesterday I took myself to the hand surgeon, who was a very nice man. He asked me what happened, gently manipulated my finger, and then said a lot of things I didn't understand, about PIP joints and flexors and tendons. Or maybe I was just too panicked at that point to take it in. What I did hear clearly was, "You don't need surgery, but you need lots of physical therapy to get it back to where it was." Physical therapy--I couldn't believe it. For my pinky. Twice a week for six to eight weeks. Tomorrow, I'm having an MRI to make sure there are no tears in the muscle.
I asked the doctor if the finger would go back to looking something like it did before, and he said, yes, you'll get back there, but that joint will always have a tendency to swell.
So all in all I guess it's not so bad. I'm relieved that I don't have to have surgery and that my finger will presumably get better. Sad that for now I can't play volleyball (the doc made a point of saying that) but it's getting toward the end of the outdoor season anyway.
My colleagues at work think it's a gas that I'm having physical therapy for my finger. One person said, "Do they have a pool for your finger to swim in?" and someone else said, demonstrating, "Well, you could just put it in a glass of water and move it back and forth."
On this particular night, I continued playing long after I was too tired. It's always hard to leave, even as it's getting dark, because it's just so much fun and so much of a release and a break from regular life. And it's beautiful there, right by the river. So, it was getting dark, and I went for a ball someone else already had called, crashed into her and the ball at the same time, and felt the tip of my finger kind of go boing as it popped backwards out of place. I immediately staggered off the court, held up my finger, and started crying. Most of the people there took one look at it and averted their faces, but one brave woman volunteered to pull it back into place. "Do you want me to do it?" she said. I said yes. She said, "Just pull it straight?" I shrugged and said, "I guess so."
And she did it. Amazingly, I felt it snap back into place. She even helped me make a little splint out a pen that I had in my bag and a small plastic bag. (When I told this story to my "other" volleyball friends, whom I play with on Sundays in the park near where I live, one of the guys said knowingly, "Oh, she did the full McGyver on you.") I took a cab back to Brooklyn with the intention of going to the emergency room, but gave up that idea after I poked my head in and realized I'd have to wait for two hours. Instead, I stopped at Rite-Aid on the way home and bought a very attractive and shiny little blue splint. I saw my doctor two days later; she sent me for an x-ray which came up negative for fracture. She left me a message with the results of the x-ray, noting that if the finger didn't seem to be getting better I could or should go to the hand surgeon, because maybe it could be something with the tendons.
I didn't take the doctor's advice right away--I thought, airily, hand surgeon, that sounds like overkill, what's this about tendons, seems a little farfetched.
But after two months, the finger is still swollen, won't bend all the way, and, worst of all, is crooked. No, worst of all is that I've had to be very cautious about playing volleyball. I've played a couple of times, with the finger taped up to the finger next to it, but I kind of knew I shouldn't really be playing.
So yesterday I took myself to the hand surgeon, who was a very nice man. He asked me what happened, gently manipulated my finger, and then said a lot of things I didn't understand, about PIP joints and flexors and tendons. Or maybe I was just too panicked at that point to take it in. What I did hear clearly was, "You don't need surgery, but you need lots of physical therapy to get it back to where it was." Physical therapy--I couldn't believe it. For my pinky. Twice a week for six to eight weeks. Tomorrow, I'm having an MRI to make sure there are no tears in the muscle.
I asked the doctor if the finger would go back to looking something like it did before, and he said, yes, you'll get back there, but that joint will always have a tendency to swell.
So all in all I guess it's not so bad. I'm relieved that I don't have to have surgery and that my finger will presumably get better. Sad that for now I can't play volleyball (the doc made a point of saying that) but it's getting toward the end of the outdoor season anyway.
My colleagues at work think it's a gas that I'm having physical therapy for my finger. One person said, "Do they have a pool for your finger to swim in?" and someone else said, demonstrating, "Well, you could just put it in a glass of water and move it back and forth."
posted by Sarah Sometimes at 11:04 PM
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