StandingWater Creations

OKay, so, yesterday morning I got up to go to work feeling pretty good, which was nice as I've felt pretty crappy for several days. Anyway, showered, shaved, and dressed and then grabbed my backpack off of the floor and threw it over my shoulder. Instead of going over my shoulder, though, it slipped backward and fell to the floor. Because I have some pretty quick reflexes (not something I admit to very often, for some reason) I reached out to grab it. Instead of getting my hand around one of the straps, the top loop wrapped around the tip of the pinky finger on my right hand. I felt the weight of the backpack with a load of something like two books, one of which is a sketch pad, and a pair of headphones, and felt my finger bend the wrong way. However, when I looked at it I thought, "Oh, that hurts," and then tested to see if my finger moved properly. Since it did I shrugged it off and proceeded go to work.

Then the problems began. I have been queasy for several days and, at really odd intervals, I would have to stop everything I was doing and just let my stomach settle. The only time this happens, with me, is when I've done a very good job at injuring myself... the last time was when I slammed my chin into a rock while hiking in The White Mountains in New Hampshire. I was with a friend, Nick, and I almost lost everything I'd ever eaten in my life, or felt like it. I am sure, in the process, I got a concussion but refused to stop for something like that when I could keep myself awake and walk it off.

Since I'd felt like I was sick, still, and hadn't gotten better, which is how I felt after I woke up, I thought, "Man, I'm still sick," and went to the married apartment to crash. I slept off and on for most of the day, in part because the couple living in the main floor of the house were moving out so the owners son and his future wife could move in this month, and they were making a lot of noise. When Erin got home, I decided to try and nap some more, noting that, at that point, I was losing some dexterity in my finger but it wasn't really swollen. As I slept, though, I kept waking up to protect my hand/finger. Along with the noise and the sudden and very severe bouts of nausea, I got up to discover that the movement in that finger was now next to nil and the swelling had almost doubled the size of my finger. Erin said, "It looks like a fat man's finger."

When I realized that the discomfort and turgid nature of the finger stopped me from sleeping and, well, working on my computer (right now I am finding it difficult to write), and because I knew that fingers don't just hurt, nausea (especially with me) isn't like that, and the discomfort/pain was pretty bad that it was time to go to the emergency room. Erin drove me. We got there and was checked out, had the finger x-rayed, and then got to listen to a lot of people claim entitlements that made me very grateful I had something to take my mind off of what we were doing.

We were there for several hours. When we finally saw a doctor (Erin making fun of me the entire time -- see her blog for more details) he showed us the x-rays and pointed out where I'd broken the bone from multiple angles. He prescribed a splint (and because I can feel the cobwebs leaving which means the medicine is leaving) and Loritab (sp) and then sent us on our way.

Sleeping, last night, was pretty hellacious. In short, I didn't really and first thing this morning I filled that prescription.

Anyway, Erin decided we needed to have a couple of pictures, after the fact, so:

and:

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