I do not believe I am making an outlandish claim when I say most people do not often think about their pinky fingers. I similarly believe I think about mine, or at least my left pinky finger, far more than most, and perhaps nearly all people, because I want to cut off my pinky finger.
I lived for some time with a type of benign bone tumor called an enchondroma in the tip of my pinky finger. The tumor had eaten out the whole inside of the last bone in my left pinky until it was just a thin shell of bone around the tumor, like the shell of an egg around the gelatinous yolk and white. Because my bone was now almost entirely not bone, it became extremely susceptible to breaking. The first time I broke it was a freak accident, or so I thought. I was running an adventure race, like those so popular during the 2010s in which one ran a grown-up obstacle course that included climbing over walls, crawling through tunnels, running through mud, and (for some reason I still do not understand) getting shocked by electrified wires. At one of the obstacles one had to jump from dry land to a set of monkey bars to cross a muddy pond. I jumped, grasped the first bar, and—POP—the pain shot through my hand and down my arm as the last bone in my left pinky finger broke. I fell ungracefully into the mud. I managed to complete the race, but grimaced in pain as I tried to climb or grasp anything with my left hand. The first stop in the car on the way home, after showering and throwing away my muddy shoes, was for pain killers and a finger splint at Walgreens. Although it was painful, I did not go to the doctor for my finger for three reasons. First, it was quite clear what happened: I had broken my pinky finger. The very localized shooting pain told me as much, despite how odd it was that it should happen trying to grasp the monkey bars. Second, what was the doctor going to do? It was broken, but not snapped in two at some crazy angle. They were going to put me in a splint, which I had already done. Third, my wife happens to be a doctor and told me in so many words: “Yes, you probably broke it. Just keep wearing the splint.” I’ve never counted talking to her as “going to the doctor.” And that was that.
My finger did eventually mend and I went on with my life, but over the next few years I broke it again and again, probably three or four more times. Each was less painful than the one before, but I could tell it never really healed all the way. Bumping it the wrong way, getting it snagged somewhere, even clapping my hands could sometimes be excruciating. Finally, I was on a weekend trip with some friends and I attempted to defend a crossover move while playing basketball. The ball hit my finger just right. It took me a millisecond to know exactly what had happened, it was such a familiar feeling by now. It put a real damper on the weekend. I couldn’t even grasp a golf club, so I drove a cart during our golf outing. When I got home, I finally set up an appointment with a doctor.
The doctor ordered X-rays and sure enough, the finger was broken, but more importantly he discovered the tumor. If I splinted it, the break would heal, but it would likely break again due to how advanced the tumor was. The other option was surgery. I agreed to the prospect of surgery to remove the tumor without so much as an explanation of the process from the doctor; I was so eager for it to finally be healed for real. The surgery was quite simple, or at least it seemed so to someone like me without a lot of surgery-related experience. I went under with general anesthesia and the surgeon drilled into my hollowed-out bone to scoop out the tumor. In its place he injected a mush of ground cadaver bone that acted as scaffolding for my own bone to grow on as I healed.
Wonderfully, it worked. I have not broken my finger since, and my follow-up X-rays (which were delayed by two years due to the COVID pandemic) showed the tumor has not returned. However, the lasting damage to my finger had already been done. It seems one cannot live with an enchondroma for years, break the same bone multiple times, and have a surgery on such a small bone without there being some lasting effects. The distal phalange of the fifth finger on my left hand is irreparably disfigured and irregular. It’s fat, splays outward, and bends too far back. The joint is weak and the finger does not do as I say. It doesn’t stay out of the way like a good pinky finger should. Even though I often wear a small but helpful splint, it still gets caught in pants pockets and slammed in cabinet doors and aches whenever it’s subjected to manual labor. It doesn’t hurt anymore when I clap, but there are myriad other opportunities for it to hurt which it finds and exploits every day. I am never, ever, not aware that my finger is ready at any time to shoot that familiar pain up my arm, a feeling I think about all the time.
I want to cut off my pinky finger. I want to cut it off cleanly at the knuckle. I’d cauterize it with a clothes iron like they do in the movies. Or I guess I could find a surgeon who would agree to do it. But everyone tells me it’s a bad idea. I argue it’s the least important knuckle of the least important finger on my least important hand. Cutting it off would be nothing more than a trifle. I read once a human can bite through a pinky finger with the same force it takes to bite through a baby carrot. Sometimes I wonder if I could do it.
But I’ve succumbed to my wife and family and friends who tell me not to surgically remove my functioning body parts, no matter how much they bother me. I wear my splint and I go about my business, but every time I bump it and I’m awakened by that familiar shooting sensation, I remember my secret wish to just rid myself of it. Physically I’d be less, but I strongly believe I’d be more whole.
COLIN PUNT does most of his writing as a practicing city planner in Wisconsin. When he’s not envisioning the future urban form, he enjoys reading books and riding bikes. His work has appeared in Midwest Review and Portage Magazine, amongst other publications. Find him on Twitter @colinbikesbooks.
