ATTACK OF THE GARAGE DOOR

About 3 and a half weeks ago I had a little accident. I decided to stick my fingers inside the moving parts of a powerful operator motor which lifts and lowers the garage door to my apartment building. Basically, the door was stuck shut and no one could get out of the garage. I discovered that I could manually lift the door by grasping the chain on the motor with my finger tips and pulling -- hard. After several minutes of inching the door up, I finally got it all the way up -- at which point the motor decided to kick back in. My middle left finger was still engaged with the chain, and got mangled against the gear teeth. The red arrow in the following picture will help you visualize where I stupidly had placed my fingers:

I was pretty fortunate not to lose my finger or hand or arm, but I came kind of close. I yanked my hand out quickly and discovered the fingernail had been completly torn off and there was a nice gash. This picture was taken several hours later; thankfully the cameraphone was a bit off focus:

I assumed I had a nasty cut which required stitches, so I went to my doctor's office. He took one look at it and called the hand surgery clinic and sent me over there, after administering a tetanus booster. He feared an avulsion fracture, which is plainly obvious in the x-ray:

Ouch! I guess that explains the level of pain I experienced.



After a few well-placed shots of anaesthetic, the excellent hand surgeon performed his magic. He drilled holes in the bones and stuck steel pins in them to hold the floating piece in place while the bone (hopefully) heals over the next several weeks. Then he re-attached the fingernail to sort of hold the position as a "splint", and stitched me up. I now have metal in my body:

I learned a couple very important lessons through this minor ordeal:

1. NEVER stick your hands in a motor. IF you EVER have to, then at least make sure the power is cut OFF first.
2. I have a white collar job for a reason; I suck at mechanical things. I'll stick with what I do.

And even though this seems like the smallest of injuries -- I mean, it's only one piece of one finger -- I have had to seriously curtail many of my activities, and I'm starting to get really restless! I haven't been able to bike (I can't work the big chain shifter or the front brake), haven't been able to do any weight training (I discovered pullups and rows really require ALL your fingers), and I haven't been able to run as much as I would like to (the throbbing in my finger really intensifies at high heart rate and cold temps).

So, I'm a couch potato for awhile. We recently got two kittens, so at least I have good entertainment for the time being.