Ouch!

I play basketball and always have. So, I've had a ball hit one of my fingers head-on and "jammed" the finger about a million times. It hurts, swells up and takes a surprisingly long time to stop hurting.

This week I was playing, caught a ball on the end of my finger and it hurt more than usual. Looked down and almost fainted! The middle bone in my finger had dislocated from the second knuckle and was pulled back below the knuckle! This is a disconcerting sight! The right thing to do to ease the pain seemed to be to pull on the finger. I did that and the bone ground back into place. Didn't hurt so much any more, the score was 10 - 10 in a game to 12 so I finished up (we won).

Went down to Urgent Care and learned that this was a "full dislocation" and I had performed a "field reduction" (pretty well - they offered me a job at the emergency room on the late night weekend shift).

When you do this, all the ligaments and tendons get stretched out so it is a good idea to split the joint for 2 or 3 weeks till they tighten up and the joint gets stable again. Makes it hard to:

1) type
2) play guitar
3) go climbing

This is not my finger (no x-ray machine at the basketball court), but is a great example of the specific dislocation.