Accidents happen

It's slow going writing this particular blog post as I am doing it with only one functional hand.  After almost 7000kms on the bikes, injury found me while running.   I wish I had a fantastic story to tell, but I simply tripped on a rocky trail and fell over.  You know that meme that goes "If you want to know if you're old fall over.   If people laugh you're still young,  if people panic then you're old!"  I can confirm, I am definitely old!

It probably didn't help that two of my fingers were quite obviously either dislocated, broken or both.   I begged Kerstin to remove my wedding ring before the finger started swelling, being three hours from the hospital I was imagining the worst case scenario of the ring tourniqueting my finger and its subsequent death and amputation.  Poor Kerstin, this kind of thing makes her faint, but she gritted her teeth and pulled off the ring. 

I then gritted my teeth and asked the ex-army maintenance guy to try and relocate my fingers, at this stage hoping that maybe they were just dislocated, however it wasn't to be.  Plan B, time to call the RFDS... whose flight nurse was sick, so they couldn't come out.   Plan C then... armed with panadeine forte, ice and a sling, it was a long three hour trip into Mt Isa ED.

But here we had some luck,  they were having a relatively quiet day, so pain relief and an Xray were pretty quick.  Outcome was confirmed,  left 4th and 5th fingers fractured and dislocated.

  

This meant that the fingers need to be reduced, or essentially manipulated back into the correct anatomical position.  This is not nice and I sent Kerstin to wait outside.  The local anaesthetic only partially worked, and since I'd already reminded them that I would need both tetanus and antibiotic cover (it looked like an open #) I didn't want to be that demanding patient who asks for more pain relief, but a little nitrous would have been great!  The 5mg subcutaneous morphine had well worn off by this stage.  So more teeth grinding was required.  But the pain was worth it, fingers back in alignment!  Well, at least closer to normal.

Cast on and follow up telehealth appointment with Orthopaedic doc from the Royal Brisbane, we headed back to Avon.  Where the crew was trying to cook one of the 'just in case' meals I had prepared and frozen, just in case.  Too scared to light up the commercial gas stove, they were using the warmer without much success.  But willing to follow instructions they got it done and we all enjoyed a roast chicken and veggie pie.

It's been 10 days since the accident, and after just two in the poorly made plaster splint I ordered one from Amazon, and even out here it was delivered within a week!   The Orthopaedic doc from the Royal Brisbane was most amused.  Plan is conservative treatment, I'm seeing a hand therapist in the Isa next week (workcover).  I will take the opportunity to get all this ridiculous hair cut off, it's impossible to manage with just one hand.