Injuries, Ineffective, Inefficient.

For the people who haven't seen me for the past 2 weeks, you probably wouldn't know that first I rolled, sprained and bruised my left ankle, and as a follow-up, I broke my left ring finger. All during flag football. Damn, I'm cool. Basically, current conditions would put me at a near full ankle recovery, but, the broken finger? Yeah, that'll be a while. I'm in a finger cast and it's pretty handy, and keeps all pressure off that finger.

Let's see all the steps I took to get to where I am now:

I made a tackle on J-Chuk, and realize I jammed my finger. Of course, the adrenaline was pumping so it didn't hurt or feel that bad, I just know I "jammed" it. Then when I look at my finger, the tip (before your first knuckle) of my left ring finger was crooked. I mean like 45 degrees crooked. Now that's a injury.

Jeremy got me to call up EST (Emergency Services Team) with his phone, and they came to the field where we were playing in about 15 minutes. So EST asked me a whole bunch of useless questions that didn't actually address my problem: a broken finger. Instead, they asked me if I had headaches, if I was dizzy, if I was bleeding anywhere else, where clearly, I waved my broken finger in front of them. "It's their job, they're supposed to check everything, Steve." Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's also called ineffective.

What amused me was that the police also came with EST, but he didnt' really help "assure the public" or "provide safety." Instead, he provided the light from his flashlight for everyone to properly look at my finger, and adds the extremely helpful comment of "That's cool. Did you make the tackle?" when I tell EST how I got my injury. Of course, EST doesn't do anything because "they don't want to splint my finger since it's bent and we don't want to move it. Take it to Barnes-Jewish." Jerry then drives me to the Barnes-Jewish Hospital ER where a guy standing at the registration desk, also asks what the problem was. I show him my finger, and he goes, "Cool." Deja vu, eh?

I get all settled in, and so when they do see me, the radiologist first takes some x-rays, and then tells me to wait for an attending doctor to see me. The attending looks at my finger, and says that it should just be a tendon mis-shift, where it should just heal on it's own with a splint. Wait, a splint? Isn't that what EST DIDN'T want to do? Whatever. So the attending puts me in a short finger splint that keeps my sore joint and finger stabilized. She goes to check the x-rays. 10 minutes later, the attending returns, and tells me that the radiologist thinks she found a fracture, so I could very well need HAND SURGERY...Baller. So the attending leaves again, and says that she'll send a hand specialist to check. 15 minutes later, the hand specialist comes and tells me that she's leaning towards a fracture, but they're not sure since it could fall either way...woohoo, I could be a specialist too if I were that indecisive. And then she leaves to go check on the x-rays one last time, and 15 more minutes later, the hand specialist returns, takes off the short finger splint, puts my finger in a longer finger splint, and she tells me that yes, it is a fracture, and that I'll need to go see a plastic surgeon...yay Nip-Tuck...I mean what?

I go to the department of plastic surgery at Barnes-Jewish (this is a few days later with the long finger splint) at the ungodly hour of 8AM, and I was received pretty quickly (since I'm the first appointment, duh). They sent me to take some more x-rays and back to see Dr. Sammer, the hand surgeon. Dr. Sammer is a pretty chillax guy, he knows what he's doing and told me everything I needed to know and more. He takes off the long finger splint, and gives me a much more fashionable, short finger splint that looks like a thimble gone very wrong..awesome. Basically, my oblique fracture could very well heal on it's own in a splint, but if the bone starts sliding more and more out of place, then I get the baller hand surgery. From what I'm looking at, my finger will stay just a little crooked, not very noticeable unless you know where to look. Oh, and to cap off the visit, Jerry and I pulled the ultimate hobo-move, where the parking for our visit was 3 dollars, but I had 2 dollars, and Jerry had 69 cents. No credit or debit allowed. Woohoo. We tell the parking cashier lady: "Sorry ma'am, but we don't have $3.00. We have $2.69." Man, she was probably dying inside, but she let us through. Great Success!

As a side note, when I took a peek at my own x-rays, there was NOTHING inconclusive about my x-rays. On the complete side x-ray of my ring finger, there was an obvious oblique (diagonal) fracture that was slightly displaced (the bone isn't lined up quite right). Hmm...the ER needed 10 people to tell me that my finger was broken...or not...or yes. Now that, is inefficient.