Broken Toe

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday we had initially agreed to play squash at 9:30 that morning. But one of the guys I was going to play with decided that because he had an important project he was trying to finish up that night that 9:30 was too early. So I took it off the calendar. By later in the day it looked like we might be able to play at around 4:30. Unfortunately the other guy I was going to play with ended up being on a call he couldn't get out of and we missed that window (all six courts were booked solid starting at 5:00). Fortunately things opened up again around 7:00 and we headed down then.

I was playing with my two business partners, one of whom had just moved back into town, and hadn't played squash in many years. I myself had only played a few times since picking it up again, and this guy is younger and in overall better shape. The first game I played with him he was still getting the hang of it and I beat him pretty handily, but by the second game with him it was apparent I was really going to have to play hard to keep up with him. As a result I ended up going for some shots that I might otherwise not have. Including one soft shot that dropped really close to the front wall. I did manage to get that shot, but I had to sprint to the front of the court to get to it, and I wasn't quite able to stop in time and I ended up essentially kicking the front wall with my right foot.

I could tell I'd slammed it pretty good, but I initially I just chalked it up as another minor bump in the course of playing. And I played out the rest of the game. I'm pretty sure I didn't exacerbate the injury by doing that, but who knows. The point was that initially it didn't seem that bad. Once I got off the court I could start to sense that it was hurt pretty bad. I considered the idea that it might be broken, but I thought I'd wait and see how I did. My two partners played another game, and then we went and grabbed a bite to eat. I ended up getting home around 10:30. As soon as I told my wife what had happened she started looking up stuff on the internet and quickly assembled a mountain of evidence indicating that I should go get it looked at. Faced with that, and my wife's concern I decided to go to the emergency room.

Overall the ER wasn't too bad. I was out by around 1:30 or maybe even a little bit earlier. The X-Rays confirmed (or revealed) that it was in fact broken, A fracture down the center of the first bone from the tip down to the joint. That latter fact means that there's some risk of developing arthritis later, so they want to send me to a podiatrist, because I guess there's some things that can be done to mitigate the risk. I took me quite a while of tossing and turning before finding a position I could sleep in without making my toe hurt, and overall, while my toe feels better than last night, I'm definitely feeling out of sorts. Supposedly it should take about three weeks to heal, I'm optimistic that it won't be a huge inconvenience, but who knows, I've never broken a toe.

I'm older than I've ever been and now I'm even older...

PS I'm trying this blog add on called zemanta which suggests links and images. So far it's pretty cool.