I guess this means no climbing for a while...
So, I don't know how many people here know, but I took up rock-climbing as a hobby at the beginning of this year. It's really fun and is a great back and arm workout.
Last night, a friend of mine and I went to the gym with a few other people to do some climbing. While he was off showing a few new-comers the ropes, (literally), I decided to do a run with someone we knew from the gym belaying. It was the first run of the night so I decided to do one that I thought would be fairly easy.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a little more difficult than I thought it would be, and about 2/3 of the way up I got to a point where I couldn't quite figure out how to get to the next hold. After struggling with it a bit I realized that I needed to get my right foot up higher, so I wedged my left hand into a hold, and shifted my weight onto it, so that I could move my right foot. It's at this point that I heard a loud *snap* and felt my index finger on my left hand cross over my middle finger. After recovering from the shock, I slowly leaned back, and told my belayer to let me down since I thought I had dislocated something.
Back on the ground I tried pulling on my finger, but I didn't feel or hear anything pop into place, so it obviously wasn't dislocated. I suggested that I should go to the hospital, but my friend poked at it a bit, and since I wasn't in too much pain from it, he said it probably wasn't broken, and that I should just ice it and rest for the night.
At the front desk, I got a bag of ice, but as I was waiting for it I started feeling really dizzy and naseous. Again I suggested going to the hospital, but my friend, who has a lot more experience than I in getting injured, again said that I should just ice it for now and talk to him in a few minutes if I still felt I wanted to go to the hospital.
A minute or so later, and still feeling sick, I went over to my friend and said, "I want to go to the hospital, now." He still didn't think it was that serious, but he humored me and dropped me off at the hospital. It took about an hour of talking to nurses and waiting before they finally took some x-rays. About an hour and a half later I was finally in with the doctor and we got to look at the x-rays. All this time I was feeling kinda stupid since my hand didn't hurt nearly as bad as most people describe feeling with a broken bone and I was becoming more and more convinced that I had just sprained a tendon, or something, and that it would be better in a couple days.
The diagnosis: I broke my second meta-carpal. Six to eight weeks for it to heal. For your amusement I have posted the x-rays:
I guess this means no climbing for a while...
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Ugh.....as a fellow rock climber, I know how it stinks to not be able to do the sport you enjoy.....the preggos took me out of it for about a year or so.
Hopefully things heal up well, and you're back on a wall in no time! :)
oh man, that stinks. hope you heal up quickly.
i know when i broke my collarbone i didn't feel anything for a while-it just felt like my shoulder was heavy (i knew something was bad only when i shifted and felt the bone poke into my neck). someone had told me a lot of times a break causes mild shock and it is just numb.
When I got the the x-ray.... I was like I don't see.. OHHH MY, OOOUCH!!
Dan, bummer! Take care, plenty of fluids, sea air, lots of sleep, rent a Porsche, visit a massage therapist, buy a round for the house, hire a maid, take a trip somewhere fun.. and buddy take it easy :-)
(*some of the aforementioned are optional i.e. sea air,fluids & sleep)
I did the same thing, I went, man all his fingers look fine, then I saw the broken bone and went OHHH.
Man, sorry about that! I broke the fourth metacarpal on my right hand October of last year in a football game, in fact it looked very similar to your break. The X-Rays actually displayed it as being twisted like a pretzel...
I thought I jammed my finger so I went to pull it out and thats when the pain came a rushing... I heard it snap when I did it and it swelled up like a golf ball.
6-8 Weeks is very accurate... make sure you go through the physical therapy, at times it will be extremly painful, but you want as much movement as you can from your fingers. It is true when they say no pain, no gain.
Unfourtunately for me some calcium built up by my knuckle which makes it larger than the knuckle on the other hand, so Im waiting till the new system to get a new one...
WHEW! sorry to hear it, dude. now you have to revolutionize one handed rock climbing or maybe you can take that one armed surfer girl on a date. oh danny boy, i hope you feel better soon.
ack! dude that stinks!
how's it feeling now?
Right now there's just a twinge every once in a while depending on how I move my arm. Overall it's feeling a lot better.
I guess it means you need a stronger meta-carpal.
sorry dude! This kind of reminds me when I broke the Scaphoid bone in my right hand snowboarding last year.
http://www.faughnan.com/medref/wristbones.gif
It hurt. But not like a TON. I figured I had sprained it. So I kept snowboarding. And then...fell on it again (figures!) and it hurt....but I still managed to ride down, hang out with some friends and then drove home from Vermont in my manual gear shift car. And then another week before I actually went to the doctor to get x-rays.
more important than that story: Heal well, and soon!
Latest update: I'm going in on Wednesday morning to get the permanent cast put on. Hopefully they won't have to re-set anything.
Thanks for the well-wishes, everyone!
Oh wow! Feel better soon and I -really- hope they don't have to reset it for you!
so how's your hand doing?
It's feeling pretty good right now. There's no real pain anymore unless I try to do something with my index finger on that hand. Thankfully it was pretty much in line, so they didn't need to set it or anything. They just put a cast on it. The cast should come off on Sep. 14, at which point they'll take some more x-rays, and decide whether I need to wear a splint on it for a while longer.
Thanks for asking!
Woohoo! The cast comes off today!