Sunday, July 25, 2010

Broke my Hamate bone

Riding my bike, I felt a tug on my shoe. I looked down and there it was, my shoelace, wrapping itself around the pedal. Having read online that when this happens on a "fixie", it's a guaranteed crash, I forcefully squeezed the brake levers and skidded to a stop.

Crisis averted... put your feet down...

Shit.

 I'm falling away from the foot that isn't tied to the pedal... maybe if I put my hand out...

*snap*

I rolled away counterclockwise a quarter turn onto my back. My immediate thought was that I had broken my arm. The remains of my summer flashed before my eyes. I looked at my forearm, wrist, then hand, there was a tiny laceration in the middle where it caught a rock, but it didn't look to be injured past that.

My fingers still worked.

I turned my attention to my right foot. My leg was still caught underneath my bike in the middle of the road. I quickly unwound my shoelace from it's hitch on the pedal, and picked up the bike, moving it to the boulevard.

That's when I noticed my little finger was numb immobile. I brought my bike home and after seeing that my hand had swollen to twice it's usual size, I hopped in the car to get to an MIR clinic. Turns out, driving a stick shift with a broken hand isn't much fun! Eight hours later, I've got a removable cast and a diagnosis;

"Mr. Carnahan, you've got an occult fracture in your Hamate bone. We'll see you in a week."

Reading up on it, I probably started the fracture golfing earlier in the year; my little finger went numb after lifting a litre of turf out of the tee-off area with a driver.

It's been getting better each day, I broke it Tuesday, it's Sunday of the same week and I think I'll be riding my bike 10km to work tomorrow with the cast on.

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