Nail through finger

Ouch! I had a little accident late Friday afternoon. I have a pile of odds & ends of wood that I am removing nails from. While separating two long 2x4s that were nailed together my finger got caught between them. I had started the separation using a crowbar but it was slow work. To make it go quicker I used my hands to pry the boards apart.

The boards are long and they snapped back trapping the fingers of my right hand between them. I tried slipping my fingers out but they wouldn't move - even though the boards were not tightly shut. I separated the boards slightly but my hand still wouldn't move. Then I saw a nail poking through my index finger. Oh!! The nail went through my finger near the first knuckle and to one side of the finger. A half inch and it would have missed my finger. I wonder if the bone deflected the nail as the exit point was almost on the side of my finger.

The nail was about 3 inches long and accounting for the 2 inch board, about an inch was through my finger. I had to separate the boards even further to allow my finger to slide up and over the nail. Success.

The nail, while not fat, was a decent thickness, as befits a 3 inch long nail. Judging on how much I bleed from paper cuts my first thought was how the blood could gush from the hole once I removed the nail. But it wasn't too bloody. Yes, some blood eventually came but I bleed more from paper cuts.

I washed the finger, put rubbing alcohol on it, then benzadine (some sort of brown staining disinfectant). Now to watch for infection. The good news is the nail is shiney and new with no rust on it. Yes, I have had a tetnus shot within the past 10 years. *whew!* And since the nail went all the way through, nothing should be left inside the wound.

Surprisingly I felt no pain. Even with my high pain threshold I thought I still would have felt some pain. No pain when the nail was in my finger; and later after the shock wore off, all I felt was a minor throbbing for a while. Today my finger feels stiff. I have a small red circle where the nail entered and a very small cut where it exited my finger.

If I get a scar from this at least this time I know how. I still am puzzled how I got the long thin scar on the back of my left hand this past December/January. It looks like a scratch but why it healed into a scar is a mystery.