Injuries!

Injuries totally suck, but they just come hand in hand with snowboarding. This particular injury was also the first time I've ever gotten a fracture and stitches as a result from snowboarding. It started out like a normal day, but the only thing different was that I went by myself and I took the bus instead of driving there. I also left my phone at home because I don't like to snowboard with my phone (broke too many phones when I was younger). That's not out of the ordinary though- whenever I drive to resorts, I leave my phone in the car. Oh yeah, I must tell you that there are some gross pictures of my injury in this post. You have been warned.

December 16th, 2010- It was my first day on my new 2010 Roxy Ollie Pop and I was SO excited to try it out at Keystone. I finally arrived there, the stupid bus takes forever sometimes, and headed straight to the gondola to start my day. First run went great, I went through the park just fine, took the A-51 lift back up, and ran into a couple of my friends at the top. We said hello, hello, and I told them I was gonna take this one run down through this boardercross-like thing that was set up at the park, there was this flat box on its side that I really liked and I wanted to hit it. My friends told me they were gonna go through this other run next to it and we would meet where the trails merged.

I hit this tube thing on its side, then went to hit the box. I went to boardslide-to-fakie it, which is something that I've done for years and am totally comfortable with. As I was sliding across the box, either my edge caught on it or the box was really sticky, and I started falling forward. I put my right hand down to catch myself, and when I did that, my snowboard edge slammed into my thumb. I pushed myself back up, landed, and felt pain in my thumb. I took off my mitten and saw BLOOD. LOTS OF BLOOD. WTF. I also saw that my thumbnail was blue under all the blood. AAAAAH. I threw my hand down and told myself, "Don't look!" I rode to where the trails merged and tried to wait for my friends, but they took forever, so I said screw it and tried to ride straight down to get some help. I left my mitten off, dangling by my wrist. My hand was SO cold from the wind and blood was running down it. I didn't know Keystone too well back then, and I ended up at the bottom of the Montezuma lift instead of the bottom like I hoped for. Whatever, I went to the lifty, asked him to please call for a ski patrol, and I seriously felt like I was going to pass out. He took me inside his lift shack, let me lay down on this bench, and gave me his water and wrapped my hand in paper towels. I also watched another lifty dig out the blood stained snow outside into a trash can. Heh, my bad.

A ski patrol came, and turns out he knew the ABCs in sign language! He was spelling out some questions to me, the usual "what happened" etc etc... then when I felt better, like not going to pass out, he took me outside and into his sled. It was cold! I only had a tarp wrapped around me, and the ski patrol took this trail that was closed and it had powder. The powder kept hitting my face and I was thinking to myself, "This isn't how I wanted to get face shots..." ha. This guy was FAST! In no time, I was at the Keystone Hospital and to my relief, there was a nurse who knew sign language!! I was SO happy, it definitely helped to reduce the stress. The nurses were asking me what happened, where did it happen, etc etc... blah blah blah. They also asked me who they need to contact and I told them to call my boyfriend who was in Denver that day. They took me to a room, cleaned off my thumb (that hurt...) and x-rayed it.

I was put back in the room, laid down, and a nurse gave me a blanket to keep me warm. The doctor came in, told me that I had a fracture on the tip of my thumb, partial nail avulsion, and I would need stitches. AAAAHH. I got so nervous about getting stitches. The doctor said he needed to numb my thumb by giving me like 5 shots around it. THAT HURT SO MUCH, WORSE THAN THE ACTUAL INJURY. I was crying and I told my doctor I hated him. He laughed, patted my back, and left. Immediately, I could feel the shots working. Ohhh yes. It worked. I felt NOTHING. He came back, and I didn't want to watch him put the stitches in, so I looked away and signed to the nurse while the doctor went to work. First thing he did was to push my nail back in... ugh gross. Then he did the stitches, and put these skinny tapes on my thumb, I assume that they were to help hold my nail on. She told me he was done, and I felt woozy again. He wrapped my thumb in gauze and put a splint on the bottom of my thumb rather than both the bottom and the top, in order to "let it swell up." I was prescribed some painkillers and antibiotics and then sent home. A Keystone worker came to pick me up, and told me she could drive me anywhere in Keystone. Shit. I was living in Dillon at the time, so I told her to just drop me off at the bus stop. Luckily I didn't have to wait long for the bus, and I immediately hopped on and grabbed the first seat I saw. I just wanted to get home.

I got home just fine, and ate a painkiller, then laid down on the couch. 5 minutes later, my boyfriend came home and was super concerned. He told me that when the doctors called him, they said I had "severed" my thumb. That is horrible!! I still have my thumb, why would the doctors say that?? He was happy to see that I was okay, and was surprised by the amount of gauze on my thumb.

Gauze and splint.

Blood on my snowboard from riding down to the lift (that's a vacuum on the right)

I felt the painkiller starting to work, and let me tell you, that shit was great. I had no pain while my thumb was healing. One thing my doctor told me was to unwrap the gauze and wrap a new one around my thumb every 3 hours or something like that. I tried to do that after the first 3 hours, and when I saw my thumb, I started crying and just couldn't do it. It was so gross and I just couldn't believe that this really happened. I asked my boyfriend to wrap it for me, I was also shaking. Done, and done, and I went to lay down and sleep.

I didn't snowboard for a week, and I was itching to ride. My boyfriend bought me new Grenade mittens a size larger than what I normally wear, but I still couldn't get my thumb to fit in the thumb part because of the splint and gauze. So I had to make a "B" in sign language with my hand and put the mitten on.

My hand was like this in the mitten

My first day back on the snow since I got hurt happened to be a powder day! Snowboarding was a little different with my injured thumb- I had to strap in with one hand, and my balance felt weird because I couldn't stop thinking about my thumb. I eventually relaxed and my balance came back. My boyfriend and I ran into two of our friends and we decided to go ride some powder. I fell during one part of the run, and let me tell you, it was SO hard trying to get back up with one hand. The snow was deep, and everytime I tried to push my good hand in to push myself back up, that hand would just sink into the snow. It was so frustrating that I started crying. I was so mad at myself for getting stuck, for hurting my thumb, for not getting out of the powder fast enough, and for making everyone wait. I stopped for a second, took some deep breaths, and tried again. Got up. Fuck yeah. Rode some more, and.... got stuck again. Sigh. I was even more mad at myself because I didn't want to make everyone wait for me. Fortunately I got up a little quicker than the first time, but I told my friends that I was done riding because I just didn't like making them wait and plus thinking about my thumb messed with my balance.

After that day, riding with my thumb got better. I even started going into the park again, and started to forget about my hand and stopped worrying about it so much. I got my stitches out the day after Christmas, and the doctor said it was looking great.

The pictures above were taken after the stitches came out. On the bottom of my thumbnail is where my snowboard hit it, and to the left of it was where I got my stitches.

A month later, my thumb was feeling better, I could bend it but I couldn't really use it. I couldn't use a lighter with that thumb, but I could write again. I also saw a new fingernail growing, THANK GOD. That was something my doctor wasn't sure about, whether my nail would grow back or not.

Gross.... but there's my new nail pushing the gross nail off.

Another angle... so gross.

That nail has fallen off since then, and I have a new fingernail on my thumb now! It is August, and I can pretty much use my thumb daily now. I have a weird sensation in it when I try to light a lighter, but it's getting better every day. My new fingernail has a bump on it, presumably from the snowboard hitting it, but it's slowly growing out. That injury totally sucked.

I am still not sure if that box was sticky or if it was because I didn't detune my snowboard. I had never, ever detuned a snowboard before in my life and never had problems. I never saw a need to do it, but after that happened, my boyfriend immediately detuned my snowboard and I also detuned my new snowboard. I'm detuning every single snowboard from now on. Shit. Another thing that's changed is now I bring my phone with me every time I ride alone. You just never know.