I didn't need that finger anyway

The way I screamed and sobbed and moaned and carried on, you'd think I had amputated the finger entirely. DH couldn't understand me at all when I first called; he was in the noisy, crowded hospital cafeteria and I was in near hysterics (well, no, complete hysterics).

"Hello?" he said when he picked up.

"I (*sob, sob*) slammed my finger (*sob*) in the doooooor (*wail*) and it huuuuuuuurts! (*Sob, sob*). Not just a little nick, but my whole finger was just stuck in the door and the door was closed and I couldn't pull it out and I was holding the toddler in my other hand and I couldn't just drop her so I had to twist and reach around to open it with my other hand while still holding her and now my finger is purple and huge and it's bleeding at the nail and it's throbbing and it hurts sooooooo much! (*Scream of pain for emphasis*) I don't know what to doooooooo!!"

"Can you drive up to the hospital with the girls, or do you need me to come home and get you?" he asked.

"Why?" I asked, panicked. "Do I really need to come to the hospital? Do you think it's broken? Will my fingernail fall off?"

"I can't answer any of that until I see it," he said, "but I may need to drill into your nail to relieve the pressure."

"(*Long, protracted, freaked-out wail*)"

"Can you come, or do you need me to come get you?"

We decided I could probably make it. He told me to take 4 Advils, put some ice on it, and then head up to the hospital with the girls.

Yes, I'm a big fat baby, but I've never completely shut my finger (or anything else) in a car door before. And while it's certainly a painful thing to do, the idea of my finger trapped between a two heavy pieces of steel was as upsetting and scary as the actual pain I felt. It took a second, when it happened, for that fact to register: Your finger has just been smashed to bits and you can't pull it back out. Add to that the complication of holding an almost asleep toddler, and it took another few seconds for my brain to register a way to get the door back open and my finger free.

DH and all his little doctor friends gathered around for a gander when we arrived. I got a lot of sympathetic looks as well as a few door and hammer stories from other people. They noted the purply bruise, the swelling, and the lack of any noticeable hematoma under the nail bed. ("Do you think you'll want to cauterize it anyway?" one colleague asked DH. I paled. "Oh, don't worry; it's just a small, really hot needle that'll melt right through your fingernail to relieve the pressure. You won't even feel it." I winced in terror.)

DH sent me to get x-rays -- only my second ever in my life; the first was last winter when I got pneumonia (which, in completely unrelated news, was the first time in my life I'd ever had a fever, and I had one for 5 or 6 days straight! I'm suddenly so interesting, lol!). It turns out I didn't break or fracture any finger bones and that, along with the complete lack of blood building up underneath the fingernail, meant that I got off without so much as a bandage. (The toddler really, really hoped DH would give me one, but frankly I'm glad not to have anything touching my wound.)

I keep loading up on the Advil at appropriate intervals and I'm fine now. The funny thing is that the injured finger is the middle one on my right hand: I keep it up and apart from the rest of my fingers so it won't bump into anything, but that makes it look like I'm flipping people off. But hey, it's been a bad day ... so maybe I am. Tee-hee.


~RCH~