Blue Thumb

Unfortunately the thumb isn’t all better this morning. I was heavily icing the base of my thumb last night because that’s where the swelling was. However, apparently the point of contact was the inside of my knuckle because that’s where the biggest bruise is this morning. The top side of my knuckle has accordingly swollen up, as I wasn’t really icing that area. I also have a bruise there, even though the ball hit on the other side of my thumb. There are bruises all the way around the circumference of the base of my thumb where the initial swelling was as well. I don’t have time to upload new pictures before work, but I’ll post those later. Should be fun trying to type code all day! My WPM is definitely way down right now.

Play Ball!

Our company team had its first game last week and we got creamed – 16-2. To be fair it was our first game as a team and the other team was well oiled and full of people that clearly played on their high school and college teams. Our second game was tonight. If you want to put the positive spin on it, we scored twice as many runs as last time and only lost by a factor of 6 instead of 8 like last time – 24-4. I scored a run in tonight’s game, which was exciting.

I, also, according to my coach, had the best play of the game, but at a price. A line drive came barreling right towards me at second base. It ricocheted off the toe of my shoe and made a beeline for my face. Of course, my competitive nature and drive to excel at everything I do played its usual part in what happened next, but so did a strong desire to keep the bones in my face intact and avoid grotesque disfiguration. I threw my glove into the path of the ball and braced myself hard. The ball slammed into my glove and found that sweet spot where the padding is thinnest, crushing my thumb. Everyone hooted and shouted ‘Good stop!’, but I was immediately distracted by the pain in my hand and forgot to throw the ball to first. Our coach, Roo, yelled ‘First base!’, jarring me back into the reality of the game. I threw it, but it ended up being a tie and the runner was safe.

It was rather disappointing to sustain an injury and not even get the out. It’s tempting to say it wasn’t worth it, but we definitely would have given up some runs if the ball had gotten past me into the outfield. As soon as the play was over, I took my hand out of my glove and tried to shake it off, but it wasn’t going to be so easily remedied. It started stiffening up almost immediately. I found it amusing when the runner that had hit the offending line drive got around to second and asked me if my hand was okay.

Having a painful, swelling thumb wasn’t exactly ideal for playing softball. Fielding wasn’t too bad except that having the glove on hurt more than not. Batting, however, was fairly difficult, since I had to not only bend it, but squeeze as well. I still managed to get on base, leading to my eventual run. Roo decided to switch me to roamer for the rest of the game because I wasn’t going to be able to do any more aggressive fielding at second. By the time the game ended 30 minutes later, my thumb looked like a little sausage and was too stiff to bend more than a flicker. We celebrated our humiliating defeat at a bar, where I iced my thumb for the duration of our stay. After that, I can bend it a little more, but I don’t notice any decrease in the swelling yet. I can’t believe how much fluid is in that sucker. I took some side by side shots with my good thumb to show the swelling and the limited range of motion. Hopefully it will be okay by next week, but I don’t think I’ll be able to ride for several days and may be out for Sunday practice as well. I’m curious to see how much better it will be in the morning.

Swollen Top Down View
Swollen Side View
Swollen Base
Limited Range of Motion