It’s true; I probably broke my hand. On Monday my company commander wanted us to pair off and do some combatives, particularly escaping the mount. I paired off with one of my coworkers, who happens to be a pretty big dude. In the process of escaping the mount, he rolled on top of my hand. I’m not sure what went wrong or whether it was the force of the impact or just the way he rolled onto it but I felt a very sharp pain in my hand. So we stopped for a minute and I shook it out and went back to it because I thought it had just been squeezed a little hard.

When I got home and started to get dressed, I had a hard time putting my clothes on because squeezing anything between my thumb and index finger really hurt. As soon as I got back to work I went to see my medics to see what they think. They gave me motrins and tylenols. Not a lot of help there. I spent the rest of the day avoiding using my hand.

The next day I went in early for sick call. Something was obviously wrong with my hand and I want a doctor to see it, or at least get it put on paper. I got an early appointment and the PA has me try to move my hand in certain ways and it hurts so he sent me to get x-rays. I got the x-rays then I was sent back to the waiting room. I waited there for an hour and a half. After the one hour mark I asked the receptionist to remind my PA that I was still waiting. A half hour later he called me in and said that the radiologist hadn’t come in yet and he couldn’t tell if I had broken it or not but he was going to treat it like it’s broken. He gave me a wrist brace, some stronger painkillers (because the motrin and tylenol didn’t do anything), and a followup appointment.

My hand swelled up pretty bad but that’s pretty much gone now. There’s a good size lump right over where it hurts the most. The brace is annoying as hell. I still can’t do some things with my left hand, like open a Cliff Bar or zip a ziplock bag.

I sincerely hope this doesn’t crap all over my planned trip to Knight’s. If I’m still in the brace I’ll probably just take it off and be careful about my hand but still go. If they put me in a cast, that pretty much keeps me from waterslides entirely. I can’t really ride my bike because I’d have a hard time braking and shifting and I tend to squeeze the hell out of my handlebars.

Thankfully my allergy clinic appointment is the same day as my followup and if they find me allergic to grass (which they probably will), hopefully I won’t have to go this again. I think this combatives program is the CO’s way of culling the weak and he’s going to cull me into a VA hospital. The end of the year can’t come fast enough.