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On Friday, I was trying to step OVER my lawn mower and slipped on a wet area of my smooth epoxy coated garage floor while wearing shoes that had the tread worn as bald as my head. Hydroplaned and did an olympic gold medal split and put my left hand out to brace the fall. Knew I did a good sprain. Used lots of ice and most of the hand got rapidly better. However, by Monday morning one area of my hand still seemed to be a little tender, so I headed to the walk in ortho place. They took X-rays and the doc there said he couldn't tell if I had a small fracture of the pisiform bone and sent me away in a fiberglass splint and an appointment to a hand specialist. Went to see the specialist today, and thankfully there was not a fracture. I'm still a bit sore in a couple spots, but was able to practice when I got home and thankfully won't have to cancel gigs.
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Yeah man, be careful out there. I don’t use any power tools the day before or day of a gig. I’ve got too much going on to give any more buffer.
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It's always amazing how quickly sh#t happens... everything is fine and a millisecond later it isn't. Take it easier than you think you can handle. A little rest now could save you months or worse later if you don't give your body a rest to fully heal.
Best of luck to you
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Yeah, this is exactly why I increased the floor space of my lawn mower's garage with an extenstion on its side.
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Wow, sorry this happened! Play your gigs, but let the hand heal as much as possible in between. Sometimes when you play through even a minor injury, it causes you to compensate in the short term in ways that can be detrimental in the long term.
This brings up a story I once heard about Howard Roberts: Howard showed up at the studio one day with a big bruise on the left side of his forehead. The engineer asked what happened. Howard said he slipped and fell. The engineer then asked, "Well, why didn't you put your hand out to stop your fall?" Howard just looked at him like he was insane!
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Wow--you're lucky. I thought this was going to end up with your foot under the mower.
I have always loved mowing, though currently my HOA takes care of all that. I did wear protective equipment obsessively. And that would include heavy duty boots--an old pair of hikers with good tread got called into service. Mowers can do a lot of damage very quickly, or they can erode your hearing slowly but surely.
It makes me cringe when I see young people mowing in crocs or flip flops, no hearing or eye protection. I have had a few patients who lost toes due to mowers, and had a guy whose riding mower flipped over, and he almost lost his entire foot.
Anyway, good thing it was just a sprain! I've had those--most recently from a bike accident--and they're not fun, but they do get better.
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Oy!
Been there, done that. I feel for you - it ain't fun. My son fell on me and broke my left thumb when I was about 40. Like your fall, this was on a Friday. I sought immediate care from an orthopod I knew well. After examining me, he decided it wasn't broken and told me to take NSAIDs and use it. We were set to drive to DC to visit my wife's brother and his wife, so I did. By the time we got home Sunday night, it looked a bit like a plum tomato. So Monday morning I went to another friend who's a hand surgeon and learned the sad truth - there was a break into the joint, with a tiny floating bone fragment. He put me in a cast, and I didn't play for about 8 weeks. I couldn't gig for about 4 months, and I wasn't fully recovered for about a year. I'm assuming the fragment either reattached iself or dissolved, since I've had no problem at all for years.
Then I got knocked over by a runaway roller skater at the same son's birthday party when I was 46 and broke my left wrist. That one was messier and I didn't even play much for about 5 months because of pain, hand & arm weakness, and instabiity in the joint. It clicked and snapped when I rotated my hand inward and outward (like when fretting...) for several years. I wore a fiberglass cast for 6 weeks, then a removable splint for another 4. Thankfully that also went away with time and exercise.
Here's to a fast, full recovery.
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@nevershouldhavesoldit Wow!
That reminds me my 50th birthday. Fell on a Sat just like today, bright sunchine in the morning and I thought *let's start the day by doing something I haven't done in a while. Let's go for a run! "
.Was running on a pavement covered with those large square slabs of concrete. Some no longer levelled or cracked by the roots of the trees lining up the road.
About 5mns in my run I lost my footing. It feltvas if some evil little troll had caught my foot and held it down. I was just about to stretch my arms forward as I realised I would hit the ground, but in a fraction of a second I thought "No! Your hands!" and I remember seeing the grey concrete slab getting closer to my face like in slow motion, and then as a last resort tried to bomb my chest to lower the impact but hit it on the chin first which tilt the head down and got me kissing the ground.
My face was a mess, some bruise on my knees and some weird pain in my chest fo a while. I did succeed in saving my hands though.
Needless to say, the party was off.
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My Toro push mower requires that I hold down a lever while operating. If one were to slip then your hand would presumably come off the lever and thus kill the engine. A good safety feature and one that should be on most if not all power tools.
Yes things can change in a split second especially these days where our focus is often divided.
Thanks for the reminder about hearing protection though it doesn’t seems loud my mower probably is about 85dB
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