Broken Digits.

I'm missing a finger. Well, I didn't lose it so much as a broke it. Ok, maybe I didn't break it, but I definitely fractured it. I at least bruised it. How did I incur this life-threatening injury? Not by trying to run super fast to impress a hot young stud. Not by saving a baby from a burning building. Not by pulling an A-Rod. Not by tackling Vin Diesel to prevent him from trying to act again. No. I punched the treadmill. Which would have been appropriate given the fact that I saw my Treadmill Nemesis this morning (the woman who yelled at me and tried to call me out after she stole my treadmill several Mondays ago). But that's not why I punched the treadmill. Nope, I was running along, left right, left right, and ran a little too close to the pulse-taking bar. I punched right into it. It really hurts, man.

I've fractured/broken a digit before. Last summer, I jumped into the pool and as I hit the water, I felt a piercing/throbbing pain in my big toe. My toe never touched anything, as I remember it. But it hurt like a mofo, turned all sorts of colors, and swelled up real nice. That didn't stop me from running on it and from wearing incredibly painful heeled boots every day. I just popped a lot of painkillers. There's a lot of scar tissue in my toe now, or so I've been told. After a month of pain, I finally called University Health Services. They couldn't diagnose it without seeing me, but then the woman on the phone kept trying to diagnose me nonetheless. I told her that my understanding was that nothing could be done for a broken toe, so why should I bother to do anything about it? She told me to stay off it, ice it, get it checked out at the hospital, don't get it checked out, you can run on it, you can't run on it, all in the same phone conversation.

So the question is, for how long do I allow the pain and discoloration go on in my pinkie finger before I seek the treatment of the fools who didn't know what to do with a broken toe? I'll give it a few weeks.