So it’s just another day in the life of building stuff, and today I’m building my first ever shed. This one is in the back of a rental property that needs a place for a lawn mower, rakes, shovels, etc and needs to be locked up.
The shed is working out great so far; level, square, and looking good. I’m trying to drill in a screw to attach the top left outer sheet, when up from the drill there arose such a clatter and…BLAM! A nice new wound to add to the list of things that will give me trouble in my golden years.
The Phillips drill bit (spinning at full speed, by the way) fell off the screw head and felt compelled to land squarely on the finger joint of my left thumb. The screw that I was trying to drive hadn’t caught onto the wood yet, and I made the mistake of putting my shoulder weight behind it too soon.
After seeing the doctor (two days later, of course) I can now say that I have thrown up on the floor of an examination room after refusing pain medication.
If you can allow this obnoxiously crude doodle of my hand to represent what happened, you will understand why I threw up. My thumb bones had two chips that had disconnected and had begun fusing in the wrong areas. The doctor had to pop them away from where they were and set them in the right areas. Breaking a bone is one thing. Re-breaking the same break and having it moved and reset is an entirely different story. Take the pain killers if you are offered them.
After two weeks of healing, here is the new look of my thumb. Not bad, all things considered.
Here we are several years later. It still has a slight, but annoying, clicking in it every time I bend it in. So my thumb is at least looking spectacular, but that bandage on my middle finger has a train wreck underneath it. See Giving the Middle Finger to the Table Saw if you’d like to see that little niblet. All in good fun.
