Needing A Hand Here

So about a month ago, I was walking out of my buliding and I put my hand out behind me to catch the door so I could bring it to controlled close. Not knowing that someone tightened the screw on the spring, the door tossed my hand aside to close on my hand and the frame. If I lost you there, it looked something like this.

This is my hand before:


This is the position my hand was in when the door closed on me:



I was in such pain that I stood there for a few seconds with my hand still in the door trying to understand what just happened and how to make the pain stop. I pushed the door open and went to my car and sat there for several minutes until the pain subsided. It hurt to drive and I had to use my left hand to control the shift.

Basically, ice was applied until my hand almost had frost bite and then it was bruised for several days afterwards. That was about a month ago. About 2 weeks ago when there was heavy rain and high humidity, my hand started to hurt when I was using it in different ways. I thought it may have been caused by what had happened with the door but thought I was just being paranoid about it. I would bend my left hand in the same angles I would my right to see if it caused the same feeling and for a day or two I thought that it was just that. Then one day while driving I realized, no, this hurts and it's not normal. So the question is do I see a hand doctor or just let it heel? I got concerned when some people were telling me their ACLs disappeared and I don't want something similar to happen to my hand. And when I was meeting a vendor and he had a stent on one of his fingers and mentioned that his doctor wouldn't comment on whether or not he broke his ligament and that he's have to go to the hospital to see a hand specialist.

So let's spend some time looking into this. I hate to waste my time because the last time I've been to a doctor, there wasn't anything he could do for me but write me a prescription for Vioxx. I think I got one 2 or 3 times from the same guy. When I told my mom that they gave me Vioxx she was concerned and told me not to take it if it's pain that I can handle. It was. Apparently, it's a strong pain killer used in the ICU for people needing to handle serious pain (i.e. surgery) and she didn't agree with the mg prescribed for me. I wasn't even there to complain about the pain, I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something wrong that I was ignoring. I will keep my opinion as to why he gave me this to myself for now. Anyway, I digress and my hand is starting to hurt again, so let's continue the research.

So I go to webMD to do some research into what I should be concerned about and it tells me that the conditions associated with my selected symptoms are:

• Broken (fractured) hand
• Peripheral neuropathy
• Cervical (neck) spinal stenosis
• Osteomyelitis (bone infection)
• MS
• Shingles (herpers zoster)

Let's go with the first one because with the reaction to the humidity I was thinking I may have a hairline fracture. Apparently, from their Broken Hand Overview, a broken hand could take "months" of rehab.

The hand is composed of 27 bones, including those in the wrist. Broken bones most commonly result from a direct blow to the hand [*check*] or a fall onto the hand. Common injuries include fractures of the fingertip, or of the pinkie side of the palm, or of the thumb.

Now let's list all the parts of my hand that may be involved here:

• Carpals -the 8 bones in the wrist
• Metacarpals - the 5 bones that form the palm of the hand.
• Phalanges - the 14 small bones that, when strung together, form the thumb and fingers.
  -The thumb has 2 phalanges.
  -The other 4 fingers are made of 3 phalanges each.
• PIP and DIP joints - the joints in the fingers.
  -The PIP (proximal interphalangeal) joint - the joint closest to the palm.
  -The DIP (distal interphalangeal) joint- the joint closest to the fingertip.

So I guess my self-diagnosis is that there is a lot involved here. Time to call a doctor. If you see me walking around with some cast around my hand sometime in the near future, you will know why. I'm hoping that I didn't tear/injure a ligament - I think I'd be very upset. Is a hairline fracture a lesser evil? Was/am I being neglectful by not seeing a doctor in the first place?