Losing Part of a Finger...and Ultrarunning

Back in February....

[image credit Gary]

...I was careless with my snowblower. A heavy, slushy snow clogged the discharge chute. Of course, the first remedy is to clear the blockage with a stick or probe, but if you use a snowblower for any length of time, eventually you'll be sticking your hand in there to pull out the slush because the stick can't do it. 

Which I proceeded to do, as I have tens of dozens of times before. Only this time I didn't wait quite long enough for the moving augers to wind down to a full stop...and CRUNCH!  The last joint of my ring finger on my dominant hand was gone. It didn't hurt--and in fact did not hurt for some hours--and only felt like a strong blow to my hand. 

Anyway, I knew at the time that it was a non-trivial event, but it has proven to be a big deal. Some 5 months afterwards, progress is slow: the finger is still swollen and thus doesn't bend well. It does not hurt per se, but often tingles when touched, feeling much like a low grade electric shock. 

The tingling and lack of hand strength/mobility are the worst effects, but as long as I am complaining, here are a few examples of some things that are affected for me:

• Using chopsticks--cannot do
• Catching a Frisbee or a ball--avoid, too afraid of jamming the stump
• I now clap like a wussy, because it hurts
• Sticking my right hand into my pocket is always a gingerly-undertaken adventure, as is retrieving the desired object
• Bowling--cannot hold the ball
• The near constant defensiveness with which I guard my sensitive finger

OK, by now you're thinking, this clown feels sorry for himself. After all, it's just one joint on one finger.  And time will continue the healing process. So this post is a cautionary tale, and the point you should take away is that every part of your body is precious, and the loss of a seemingly minor chunk is in fact a big deal.  AND: don't get complacent around machines!

My takeaway is that I have a huge respect for the perseverance of lower extremity amputees who somehow regain their running abilities,  managing to push through the pain and all the other stuff to make a prosthesis work.  At best, it's a tenuous body-contraption partnership that has to require vast amounts of gumption and will to function.

I am acquainted with the loss of a piece of a finger; I cannot fathom what it must take to make a replacement leg work.  My hat's off to you folks!

Faceplants...and Ultrarunning

The notion of doing a faceplant is a common theme throughout the Ultrarunning community, as we often trip on roots or rocks and pitch headfirst onto the trail, with some greater or lesser degree of injury to pride and body.

I've taken plenty of spills, thankfully none of which resulted in serious harm. So for me, faceplants were a quaint notion, a funny side of the sport, one that I gave little thought to other than in a tongue-in-cheek way.  

But, no more.

Seems that the great geeky/sciency site Boing Boing recently did a piece called The Science of Faceplanting:

The epic faceplant GIF is the Mom’s apple pie of online culture. Representative of all that the Internet stands for, it is reliable and true blue. Many things will change. You will age. Life will be irrevocably altered. But there will always be some poor soul--or idiot--falling flat on their face, over and over and over.

The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery recently published a clinical study analyzing the forces at work on the face of one such young man. Titled “Video Analysis of the Biomechanics of a Bicycle Accident Resulting in Significant Facial Fractures”, the paper claims to be the first analysis of an actual recorded faceplant trauma. That may be true for bicycle accidents, but it’s not the only time scientists have used video of an impact to understand what happens to the faces involved in that collision. In fact, the most interesting takeaway here isn’t from this paper, itself, but from the window it provides into a scientific field — injury biomechanics, the study of how we hurt ourselves. 

So, if you were expecting a funny post about faceplants you've come to the wrong place.  Go ahead and click over to the article, it's fascinating.

Tough Running

Another short post due to computer problems but hopefully those issues will be soon solved.

Finger issue still is complicating my ability to run, although that is improving.  Wound care doctor and my ortho see steady healing after the secondary infection that put me in the hospital a couple weeks ago.  The pain is now manageable, so today's run is mostly dependent upon my desire to run in the teeth of a howling wind and bitter temperature.

We'll see.

An Eventful Week...and No Ultrarunning

[image credit Gary]

The bride and I took our 19-year old kitty, Molly, on her last ride on Monday.  She had a large tumor on her side that had finally gotten big enough to begin to take over all her body resources (food, water) so that she was becoming mere bones + tumor, and was rapidly dehydrating. 

But even on our laps as we waited at the vet's office, and on the table, she purred and seemed not to be afraid.  She was a good kitty and will be missed.  We buried Molly beside her brother Sammy, who made it to to age 18 (see, we believe in people names for our cats--it makes them last a long time).

After getting home from the vet, we tackled clearing the driveway from the 6" of snow that had arrived earlier in the day.  While operating the snowblower, the discharge chute clogged, and I waited like I always do for the auger and second-stage thrower to stop spinning before reaching in to clear the blockage.  Such a slushy mixture does not respond to digging at it with a stick, you have to manually grab it.

Perhaps I was distracted by the cat sadness, or was just plain careless.  In any case, the second-stage thrower was still moving.  Bottom line: I severed the last joint of my right ring finger.  Hello, Emergency Room!

It'll heal up, but I'm realistic enough to know that full recovery will be measured in months rather than days or weeks.  Remains to be seen how this may impact my running, but I feel optimistic that aside from the immediate time off, there (hopefully) will be no long-term impacts.

Mandatory disclaimer: Don't try this at home.  Instead, when you let go of the auger control, ACTUALLY LOOK AT THE MOVING PARTS TO VERIFY THEY HAVE STOPPED MOVING BEFORE YOU ATTEMPT TO CLEAR THE CHUTE!

Typing is tough so blogging may be a bit subdued for awhile.