Rugby Injury

This is Ian. Instead of playing Football in Denmark, I’m playing rugby instead (It's a much more violent sport, and I actually enjoy playing rugby more than football). I've been playing since March with my school team. We did not have enough players to have a team we could take to tournament (we play sevens rugby, and we had exactly seven players, so the coach cancelled our tournament team for safety reasons, as none of our players could get injured and would have to play every game with no substitutions). We kept practicing anyway and once our season ended, a few of the other players from the school and I joined a local rugby club to play year-round. I've read that if you play rugby, eventually, you will become injured in some way. This is my story of just that. 

I'm in the blue and white jersey, 5th from the right. This picture was taken about  10 minutes after the initial injury.  You can see me adjusting the bandage on my hand so I can keep playing. 

I have been playing with this club for only a few weeks now. On Tuesday, we were playing and my hand was stepped on by a cleat after I made a tackle. I knew something was up, but didn't look at it too hard and thought it was just a bad sprain, so I wrapped it up and kept playing for another hour. After practice, my coach and I were talking as I unwrapped my hand to get changed. As soon as I uncovered the area, we both knew it was broken. My mom and I went to the ER for an X-ray, confirming I had broken my 5th metacarpal bone on my left hand (the bone in the palm linked to the pinkie finger). After a week of phone calls and appointments with the doctor, I went in for surgery to have to bone realigned (the bone was slightly twisted). They put two pins in my bone today, which will stay in for about 5 weeks, then will be removed. They used local anesthetic on my arm, so I was awake for the whole operation. I won’t say much about that, but it was very eerie knowing what was going on with the pins and all. I couldn't see it, but I could hear it.
 

 

The surgery went much better than I had expected and the entire process from the initial break, up until now has been very easy to deal with. My hand actually still feels as if it is sprained and the only time it actually hurt was for the few minutes at practice immediately after it broke. The entire time it has been more of a discomfort than actual pain. We have been blessed with how easily it all has gone at the hospital and the fact that I have felt very little of the pain one would think came with a broken bone (now I can kind of feel where the incision and sutures from the surgery are, but they too are more of a discomfort than actual pain and also very fresh, so I expect that to subside soon).  In about 5 to 6 weeks, I’ll have the cast and pins removed, then I’ll go back to playing rugby until mid-October, when I’ll start basketball again, then I’ll continue rugby in the spring when the ground thaws with both my school and club teams.