The Tale Of The Navy-Blue Thumb

 Monday started off pretty much as I expected it to.  I went to Latin class, felt my brain ooze out of my ears after 2 hours of extremely hard work, did some errands and came home again.  This is when the day began to go downhill on a serious level!

I still can't work out exactly how I managed to do this, but I managed to slam the car door very hard on to my right thumb.  Much to my surprise, I did not shout, scream or swear.  I simply walked into the house with tears streaming down my cheeks, went straight into the kitchen, ran the cold water tap and immersed my poor thumb under the water.  By this stage of my right thumb nail was at least 50% discoloured and had had turned navy blue but the pain was starting to subside a little, probably because I was about to develop frostbite...

I carried on my tasks round the house for the rest of the day, feeling the thumb throbbing ominously; by the time I had logged on to Facebook in the early evening and was talking to my dear friends Babushka Laura and Babushka Margaret, I was in a substantial amount of pain, and was beginning to seriously wonder whether I had fractured my thumb.  I went to bed having taken large quantities of painkillers and rested my hand on a soft pillow.

When I woke up the next morning, 90% of the nail was now completely navy blue and it really did hurt a ridiculous amount - the thumb was throbbing in synchrony with each and every heartbeat, as if it was about to explode, and it was swollen to at least twice its normal size.  After we had taken the girls to school, The Hubster and I made our way to a hospital which has a very good minor injuries unit.  Within 50 minutes, I had been assessed, my thumb X-rayed, the nail perforated to let out the large amount of collected blood underneath it, and the thumb had been securely dressed and splinted.  I had indeed fractured my thumb!

It is only when you can no longer use your thumb properly that you realise how much you really do depend upon it in everyday life.  Even the simplest tasks proved almost impossible to do one handed; I could not brush my hair properly, I couldn't even tie my own shoelaces without extreme difficulty..  I was almost as completely incapacitated as if I'd had broken my arm.  Needless to say, this has made typing almost impossible and the only way this blogpost has been brought to you is by the miracle of voice recognition software and a microphone which Mrs. DoomHamster remembered that she had left in the computer case in her old bedroom before she left to go to America :-)

The good news is that the pain has almost gone completely and the bruising is resolving; I am waiting to hear from the hospital when I will be able to remove the splint.  I can guarantee one thing, I will definitely be much more careful what I shut car doors in the future!