Yesterday I was reminded how I’ve always spent most of the days of my life in some sort of pain. As a skateboarder, a snowboarder and just a flat out athlete growing up I was always getting injured, and still am, but I just learned to live with it. I’m sure many of you can relate. It’s funny when you think about it how we sprain an ankle so bad and just limp around putting most of our weight on the other leg until it heals, or you break your wrist and 3 days later you’re out there skating again, just with a bit more caution. As skateboarders, we must expect to get injured and must always be prepared to deal with it. That’s just part of our painful life…
So yesterday I showed up to continue renovations on the new skate shop and my 1 finger was just growing and growing in size. It had started the day before and I had hoped it would magically heal while I slept but that did not happen. So I knew that it must be infected and called the doctor. Now I’m a self-healer and don’t visit the doctor for too many reasons. Even when I blew my MCL and couldn’t walk for months I never even went to the doctor, I just rehabbed it all myself. So I worked all day framing and getting some drywall started and then off to the doctor’s I went not knowing what he was going to do for me. This was the first time I ever met this particular doctor since it had been so long, and he walked in looked at my finger and just started squeezing it as hard as he could. Then he looked at me and said, “I was trying to save you from the incision but it looks like we will have to cut it open.” I asked what caused this and he said it didn’t matter, it’s an infection and needs to be drained out. So after telling me how the numbing solution he was about to inject into my finger was going to hurt 10 times more than what it already feels like and explaining that if he has one of these infections he won’t even freeze it because of that, he injected it. Holy F#%@!! I couldn’t believe it. I always consider myself to have more pain tolerance that anyone could imagine but this was ridiculous. I was swearing, started sweating and actually wanted to throw up from the pain. I’ve had dislocations, herniated discs, internal bleeding and much more, but this might have been the most pain I ever felt. He sliced my finger open and squeezed out what he could and then sent me on my way with a band-aid. The worst part was that the pain stuck around in full affect until the numbing solution wore off 2 hours later. It was insanity, I couldn’t even function, but it’s all good now and I’m glad that I went. But now I know why the doctor won’t even use that technique on himself.
It was just a reminder that no matter how much we train our bodies for pain and injury, you never know what is going to happen next. I was lucky that this wasn’t a bad one in the end and glad I went to the doctor when I did. But next time I get an infection I’m gonna think twice about how to fix it…