Steamboat rules

And so do my friends. But first, let me address a reader concern: The Injury Report.

The worst injury award goes to Harry. He busted the hell out of his shoulder. I think he's torn his rotator cuff and needs pretty extensive physical therapy. He heard it 'pop' twice and I found some point tenderness over a muscular insertion point. Oops.

The award for the most satisfying fall goes to Tim. The dude is a skiing and teaching God, but yet skiing with me was challenging enough to push him into actually losing a ski. Yes! I felt like a mountain Goddess... for about two seconds until I too ate shit.

The award for the injury with the most impact on my personal life goes to hubbie. He lashed his neck something fierce on one of his last runs, and he's still in pain two days later. Guess I should schedule a message for the man.


I, however, win the award for the grossest injury. Ski boots need to be snug to perform correctly. So my boots are size 7. My shoe size is nine. Can you sense the problem? Anyway, I ended up with a litany of podiatric problems:

• bleeding blisters on my shins bilaterally
• ankle blisters (no blood though, very wimpy)
• cracked nails

But the best foot injury of all was (is) definitely my left great toe. Somehow the pressure on my boot caused a whopping subungual hematoma, aka blood blister. It involved the whole nail, but oddly enough was only painful of ski day #2. Then it just kinda went numb. Is that bad? Today, two days after my last ski day, the hematoma finally popped. I've been oozing nasty bloody serum-like stuff on my sock all day. Yum yum yum! But my nail is no longer blue and I can see the pink of my nailbed again. So that's good.

***Note: While looking for images for subungual hematomas, I found this really cool article on skiers toe. That's what I have baby... and I should have used a drill bit days ago. I was waiting until I got back to the ER and could use a professional grade cautery tool. Oh well.