Hospital’s failure - double-check everything you are told

I have broken my finger during the last tournament. Good news is we have qualified for Regional Qualification for European Finals, the bad is I’m out for 3-5 weeks. Since we are an amateur sport, we have to finance everything ourselves and we don’t have any club background what so ever. My visit of the hospital turned out to be utter fail and I decided to share my experience to encourage self-education and critical thinking.  

The visit

Funny thing is that the whole visit started by my own fail. I headed straight for the X-ray, where I was told that I need to check surgery first, that I can’t just go and have my bone X-rayed. Fair enough. Let’s just say I knew it was broken :P.

So I went from floor -1 to 5 to visit the surgeon. One would say that those two places would be closer to each other but let’s just ignore that. I took out my book, thinking that it will take some time before it will be my turn, when the door opened. They immediately took me in and I was greeted by a lecture how rude it is to enter a room with two ladies with a cap on my head. While I was holding bag in one hand and book in the other one I replied “hello”. From that moment I judged very sceptically all the information from her. The interaction with the Doc. was one of the worst ones in past few months. She didn’t even let me finish my explanation of what happened and send me on my way to X-ray. I went from floor 5 to -1. There another Doc. read the protocol and set off to prepare the X-ray. I was confusedly watching the red lines moving around different finger than the one that was broken. So I told the Doc. and she, after double-checking the protocol, aimed for the right one. She was really sympathetic though and every one can make a mistake and when it’s a minor one it doesn’t really matter. So with a smile I went from floor -1 to 5.

When I was laying aside my bag in the surgery again I was interrupted by the Doc. that I’m going straight away to another room where the arm will be fixated. I was really confused and wanted to see the picture first, yet I obeyed (I will know better next time though). The sister has attached a lath fixating auricular and ring (the broken one) fingers that reached up to my wrist. To be fair she shared a bit of interesting information with me so it wasn’t all bad (still better than the Doc.), but then she told me that in three days I should come and that they will create a cast around the arm. I didn’t believe my ears. I was like…what?

The following day in a pub with physiotherapist

I contacted my friend whether he wants to go to a pub with me. It is my teammate, team coach and a physiotherapist at the same time. I was there first standing in the middle of the room talking with other friends that were present. Right at the moment when he entered the room he was like “What the fuck do you have on your hand?” We had a beer and joint and he started to check my arm heatedly. He soon realized that I’m actually able to move the finger inside the lath. On top of that the auricular finger was twisted beneath the ring finger, causing the ring finger to bend RIGHT at the bad spot when I unconsciously moved it. Also he found out that in order for this lath to be effective, they would have to fixate even my middle finger with the rest. He couldn’t believe his eyes and told me that I should get rid of this shit and fixate my finger with this, or with a tape, until I get my hands on one.

During that night we have also practiced physiotherapy a bit and I was able to accomplish the biggest improvement during one session he has had during his entire carrier. More about that in separate post so stay tuned if you’re interested.