Distal Phalange

It happens. On the way out of the house to go to work one day, I found a flat tire on my truck right where I parked in front of the house. Turned around, changed into "dirty" clothes and began to change the tire. To begin, the bottle jack that is supplied with a new truck is useless. But, that's not the reason for my mistake.

My Mistake: While lowering the spare tire from beneath the Tahoe, it takes two hands to unhook it from the support cable (if you've ever done this, you'll know) and the tire/wheel slipped out of my hand. As it was falling, I had a split second (otherwise known as an "ohnosecond") to get my other hand either out of the way of the falling wheel, or completely flat against the ground and brace for impact.

Would you believe I almost did it? The longest finger just didn't get flat in time. The very last bone on my middle finger broke upon impact. That's when I called AAA. Until then, I wanted to get acquainted with the procedure in case I needed to when far away from home. Before this, I said to myself "Why call AAA when it's not an emergency?" At 90F sweaty degrees, trying to get to the office, with a swollen finger and a pissed-off attitude, it was now an emergency.

When the guy arrived, he set aside the bottle jack and pulled out a $20 floor jack from Kragen's. He has a truck, also, and this is one of the first things he did: Replace the factory jack with a real jack. Once I got going, that's the first thing I did.

The result is endless frustration as I had a brace on that finger until today. Typing was a chore. Everything else was complicated.

I'm back.