INDIANAPOLIS — Instead of driving a race car and speeding around a road course or short oval, I spent last week at the IU Health Methodist Hospital Senate Street Surgery Center.
On Aug. 4, I had my broken pinky finger surgically repaired.
I wish I could say that a cool racing crash was the cause of my hand injury, but alas, the real reason was much, much lamer. However, the way that I found out my pinky was broken was admittedly a little less lame.
It all started in early June when I was playing basketball with my cousin Jeb. We were just shooting shots in the driveway of my Grams’ house in Indiana when the ball ended up 20 or so feet in the air. I planned on catching and stopping the ball dead in its tracks after it had bounced on the ground, because I just wanted to.
I thought it would be kind of cool-looking but also efficient.
Instead of me stopping the ball though, I miscalculated its trajectory and the ball had enough energy on the bounce to break the middle section of my pinky.
It hurt badly, but I just thought it was a pretty bad jam, so I didn’t think much of it. However, over the next couple of weeks or so as the swelling went down, I realized that I couldn’t straighten out the very end of my pinky and that the middle section of my finger was also still somewhat misshaped.
It wasn’t until that second weekend after the accident when I was racing the F1000 car at Indianapolis Motor Speedway when I got confirmation that my pinky was broken.
The way this happened was somewhat ironic.
I got a cool racing story about how I figured out my finger was broken.
I mentioned a couple months ago about how in race two at IMS for the SVRA weekend I got in a racing incident that ended up hurting my left thumb and wrist. I went to the IMS medical center to get it checked out and make sure there was nothing wrong and that I’d be able to race the 90-minute enduro later on that day.
They confirmed only minor sprains and cleared me to go.
However, what I didn’t tell you was that I went back to the center 15 minutes later to ask them about my pinky. They ended up taking x-rays of my left hand and I figured “well, might as well go back and ask them if they could see anything weird with my pinky.”
That’s just what I did, and the doctor who evaluated me came out after taking another look at the X-rays and said, “Yeah, your pinky’s broken. You’ll need surgery to fix it.”
I wasn’t exactly surprised when he said that, but I was definitely annoyed at myself for not getting it checked out sooner. This news led me to getting evaluated at the highly reputable Indiana Hand to Shoulder Center the very next week.
When my racing schedule allowed, surgery was booked to fix my pinky.
There wasn’t any pain from the surgery itself since they knocked me out and gave me a nerve block to make sure I couldn’t feel anything. It took almost 12 hours after the surgery for me to be able to barely move my fingers at all due to the nerve block’s effects finally wearing off.
The next morning, I was able to move my arm completely with just the tips of my fingers feeling only slightly numb.
It was kind of funny because I told the doctors and nurses who treated me before the surgery that I didn’t want to become another statistic of the Opioid crisis, so they decided to just prescribe me Ibuprofen, which I thought was nice of them.
I didn’t take any pain medicine at all on Friday, because I was interested to see what the pain levels of my pinky was like, to see if it was better, worse, or the same compared to when I initially broke it.
It turned out to be worse, which wasn’t unexpected. At its worst, it felt like my pinky was constantly caught in a rolled-up car window. Constant, acute pain, but tolerable. I don’t really experience pain and suffering very often, something I’m very blessed to be able to say, but I definitely didn’t want to pass up the opportunity this time.
Friday night, though, the pain kept me from being able to sleep soundly, and I draw the line where my sleep starts to get impacted. So I gave in and took a couple of Ibuprofen tablets to sleep.
Now I’m down to just one Ibuprofen before I go to bed and at this point, I don’t think they’ll be necessary at all going forward. My focus is just on recovering as quickly as possible before my next race day on Aug. 19, when I will be running the Silver Crown car at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.
I break the monotony of recovery with the occasional irresponsible activity to keep my doctors on their toes, but that’s about it.
So that’s the story of why I won’t be racing for the excruciatingly long period of time that is two racing-less weeks.
As long as I can manage to avoid re-injuring my pinky for the next three or so months, it will take to fully heal with a splint on while also racing every weekend, I’ll be a very happy camper.