How's Your Face?
So a couple weeks ago something amazing happened. I broke my nose. More technically, its an incomplete fracture and it didn't hurt as much as I was led to believe it would.
The incident occurred at our roller hockey game Sunday October 19th. We were winning 11-4 and there was about 2 minutes left in the game. The opposing team had the ball in our zone near the bench side. The ball came back to the point and one of their players wound up for a slap-shot. I was to his left and decided to put my stick blade in front of where he was about to shoot in order to block the shot from getting to our goal. Big mistake. The ball immediately ricocheted off my stick and hit me square on the bottom part of my nose.
The incident occurred at our roller hockey game Sunday October 19th. We were winning 11-4 and there was about 2 minutes left in the game. The opposing team had the ball in our zone near the bench side. The ball came back to the point and one of their players wound up for a slap-shot. I was to his left and decided to put my stick blade in front of where he was about to shoot in order to block the shot from getting to our goal. Big mistake. The ball immediately ricocheted off my stick and hit me square on the bottom part of my nose.
I instantly put my gloved hands over my nose to catch any of the blood that I was sure was gushing out from getting on the floor. To my surprise, there was no blood. I double checked this assessment and then located the ball and cleared it out of the zone some 25-30 seconds later. I then came off on a line change and sat out the final minute and a half of the game.
Sitting there my nose hurt, but not that bad. The game ended we, shook hands then went back over to where we change. People kept saying my nose looked kinda fucked up. So after 5 minutes or so I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror. I noticed that the right side of my nose was bulging out a little so I gave it a push. It cracked twice, rather loudly. Oh shit. I went back over to the team and sat there for awhile. Then i got all clammy and sweaty and felt like vomiting and passing out at the same time. The feeling eventually subsided and I stopped sweating. Then I decided I should probably go to the ER, which is where the lovely X-ray came from.
The nose doc at Lockport Memorial was out of town for a funeral so I mostly went untreated; they just confirmed that my nose was in fact broke and they gave me a pain pill script and contact info for a nose specialist in Amherst. I met with Dr. Nabi the following Thursday and to my delight learned that nothing was messed up inside my nose as far as breathing and sinuses were concerned. He told me it was still too swollen to try and reset it but if I was unhappy with its appearance come Monday I could set up and appointment and he'd fix it up (not happening).
I had heard from multiple people that breaking your nose is one of the most painful injures you can get. One the classic 1-10 pain ID scale they used at the hospital I told the guy I was at a pain level of 2. That scale does not apply to me. My pain threshold is extremely high. Once you snap the largest bone in your body clean in half any other injury you sustain kind of pales in comparison. I've broken countless fingers, only the first time did I go to the hospital, any other time I just buddy taped it and moved on. I had arthroscopic knee surgery (after dealing with my torn cartilage injury for over 6 months) and only used 2 pain pills out of the whole bottle.
The only bad thing about the nose is that you have to be extra careful about not touching it cause that actually hurts more than when I actually fractured it.
