Me, my wrist and I

When I was in grade 11, I took an awkward fall during a soccer game and jammed my right wrist as I fell back on it. Not thinking too much about the injury, I taped it up and continued playing. A few weeks later, I noticed that I had a hard time playing badminton in gym class. One year after the fall, I still wasn't able to ride a bike because putting pressure on the palm of my hand caused a really awful pain sort of like hitting my funny bone. Now, 5 years later, I can't ride a bike, do pushups or play racket sports. And it finally occured to me today as I was inspecting my wrists and realizing that there was a bone sticking out of my right one that wasn't at all visible in my left, that I should make an appointment with my doctor while I'm in BC to see what's wrong.

After a bit of sleuthing on the mayo clinic's website, I matched my symptoms (to the last detail) to a scaphoid fracture, after reading the following:

"Many sports-related injuries to the upper extremity involve a fall onto an outstretched arm. The navicular or scaphoid is a small, kidney bean-shaped bone located in the wrist just below the thumb which may be fractured during such a fall. The athlete frequently treats the injury as a sprain or bruise. A fracture results in an interruption of the blood supply and, later, bone death or necrosis."

Yikes. Looks like my summer of swimming might be cut short. Or, alternately, I could just ignore the pain and pretend I didn't realize that something might be wrong. I'll update after my doctor's appointment - for now, I need sleep, and the morning wake up from the disgruntled boyfriend (who is demanding a SALARY for being my alarm clock on week days) comes in less than 7 hours.