Keepin' You in the Loop

I finally got to see the hand surgeon. After an arduous two hour wait that left me both exhausted and a little pissed off, I finally got my time with the doctor. When my appointment was an hour behind schedule I asked the receptionist if the doctor would be reimbursing me for my time... He closed the glass in my face....so I turned to my peers in the waiting room making a face and gesturing with my hands as if to say, "Can you believe this shit? Aren't you guys all glad I said something?!" I'm not sure it came off that way.

Over the course of the next hour I began plotting my vengeful verbal assault on the doctor....which pretty much consisted only of repeating the sarcastic remark I'd already lobbed at the receptionist. How dare he overbook on the day I was supposed to see him?!

Buuuuuut as usual, when faced with a person so obviously more intelligent and accomplished than myself, my tail went between my legs the moment my name was called.

"Sorry about the wait," I was told by both nurse and later the doctor.

"Oh, that's ok," I replied on both occasions.

The doctor was kind enough to show me my MRI and explain to me what happened, a courtesy not previously paid by my actual doctor, who doesn't know my name, and always looks like he's coming off of a 48 hour coke binge when I see him.

But I digress. Apparently, when I connected that punch months ago- July 1 to be exact- the bone at the base of my hand, top of my wrist, that connects the bone in the hand and under the pinky to the base of the other finger's portions of the hand (sweet description right?) "shredded" and separated in what I believe was termed a compression fracture. The doctor asked me if I remembered something clicking back into place at some point after the incident. Actually, I vividly remember the morning after and having been able to move a bone around in my swolen hand. I could feel it click. At some point that day, the clicking stopped (probably when I was body surfing at the Jersey Shore)....apparently because the bone popped back into place... the WRONG place. As I was too much of a tough guy to see a doctor right away, the bone healed/calcified about 3.5 mm (according to the Dr. Popular) lower than it should have. As he tells me this, I hold my hands up side by side and notice for the first time that the pinky on my right hand is noticibly shorter than the left. Add that to my ever-growing list of deformities.

To make an already long story a little shorter (something Mussolini tells me I need to work on), there are bone fragments at the base of the bone where the break occurred....obviously they're very small, making the likelyhood of a successful surgery slim. Naturally I had to pose the question....... Had I gone to see a doctor right away they would have pulled my pinky and the bone below it, up and into it's rightful place, and screwed my pinky knuckle to my ring finger knuckle. Only, as we all know, I didn't see a doctor until almost 2 months later.

Prognosis: Not so good. "Therapy. You need to stregnthen your right hand. You may as well take that hand brace off...as it's not doing anything."

It was at this point that my passive-aggressive sense of humor made it's apearance. "So I can start masterbating again?" I asked in a defeated monotone (joking of course...this is why God gave man two hands!). He didn't laugh....just awkardly looked at me for a moment and then started talking about something else.